How can I update many instances of a copyright notice at once?

andy_hog · August 7, 2011, 11:08am

Hello everyone.

I’m posting in this section of the forum as I don’t know what language I need to accomplish what I want to do.

I have a footer on my website that contains a copyright notice. The same copyright notice appears on every page but, as it’s a photography site, there’s going to be a lot of pages and I’m looking fo some way to update every copyright notice at the same time.

My initial thought was an image (with relevant ‘alt’ text) but that seems a little inelegant. Is there a script I can use, or a way of embedding a default footer text via CSS, so I only need to amend the copyright notice once for it to update across the whole site?

Thanks in advance.

Andy.

FFCus · August 7, 2011, 4:48pm

Is the site written in PHP or .NET? Either of those will allow you to include a generic content block that would only need to be updated in one spot. Ruby may too, but experience with Ruby is zero.

It can also be implemented (not ideally) with JavaScript.

Whatever you do, don’t take the “image with alt text” route.

Verscienta · August 8, 2011, 12:02am

It really depends on the language your site is written in, so if you could tell us what coding standard the site is written in, then we would be able to help you.

SpacePhoenix · August 8, 2011, 12:50am

Is the copyright notice to be like:

©2011 <site_name_or_owner_here>

or

©2010-2011 <site_name_or_owner_here>

Is the footer a normal html file or is it generated by whatever server-side (which language) you’re using?

If it’s the former then you could

logic_earth · August 8, 2011, 6:46am

Could just remove the copyright notice all together. No longer an issue when the date changes.
Or just remove the year. No biggie.

andy_hog · August 8, 2011, 1:38pm

Thanks for the replies. My apologies for not giving you more details.

The site is a very straightforward HTML/CSS construction, with a tiny bit of PHP on the contact page.

Although I’ve done a little work on the look and layout over the weekend, the underlying HTML code hasn’t been changed - you can look at the otiginal version here: Andy Grey Fine Art Photography - Home page

Thanks.

Andy.

FFCus · August 8, 2011, 3:06pm

Not sure if you’re interested in converting all pages to PHP and updating the navigation…but if you did you would be able to use include files.

TexasBob · August 10, 2011, 3:58am

If the site is already php you can do something like this: