Chapter 5. Automating Static Page Production from a Data Source

On first blush, creating static Web pages dynamically appears to be an oxymoron, if not just a bad idea. Data-driven or dynamic pages are often highly touted as the next evolutionary step for static HTML, so why would anyone ever want to go back? Home pages are often static, although increasingly, they are beginning to include some form of dynamic content. Static pages are often created within a dynamic site to provide a context for search engines to engage. Moreover, some clients just have not made the leap to dynamic site.

Whatever the reason, if your production environment would benefit from dynamically generated static pages, Dreamweaver is up to the task. Besides Dreamweaver, the techniques described in this chapter require some type of application server or middleware , such as ASP, ColdFusion, or PHP server. Although this chapter's examples all use a local development server, remote application servers can also be used.

The enhanced template power found in Dreamweaver MX opens up the possibilities for static page generation. In this chapter, we'll first look at the general technique for extracting data from a data source and then how to integrate that data with Dreamweaver's editable regions . Later in this chapter, you'll see how to show or hide template-embedded content, depending on data-derived values. We'll also examine how to programmatically increase the number of entries in a Dreamweaver template repeating region. Finally, we'll discuss a method for replacing third-party tags with external content in case your shop does not use Dreamweaver templates.