[Web4lib] Need efficient way to post "library closing" message

[Jonathan Gorman]

What type of webserver do you use?  There's probably actually several 
solutions to this, but one low-cost way may be to add a server-side 
include to those particular pages.  Have it point to a normally empty 
file, but insert the warnings as needed.

Server Sides include can increase the processing time for apache to deal 
with a file, so you may wish to only do it when there is a message that 
needs to be used.  You can turn this on and off.  If it's off the line 
will just appear as a comment embedded in the html.  (You can also use the 
XBitHack described in the apache doc to help with this issue as well).

Not the greatest solution, but a quick short-term.


Jonathan T. Gorman
Research Information Specialist
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
216 Main Library - MC522
1408 West Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 244-4688


On Thu, 30 Nov 2006, Kathy Gaynor wrote:

>
>
>
> In the past, we have added a message to the top of selected pages on our web
> site to inform our users of the library's closure over the winter holidays.
> For example, we would add a message to our home page, main database page,
> our request forms, "Ask a Librarian" email reference form, etc. There are
> probably about 18 pages that were involved.  We thought that we should add
> this message to more than just our home page as users may take various
> routes to get to a specific page.
>
> I'm wondering if there are other more efficient ways to handle this other
> than manually adding the message to each page and deleting it after we come
> back to school in January.  We recently revised our web site to be XHTML
> compliant and to use style sheets.
>
> Thanks for any suggestions you might have.  Our web site is at
> <http://library.webster.edu>.
>
> Kathy M. Gaynor
> Reference Librarian
> Emerson Library/Webster University
> 470 E. Lockwood Ave.
> St. Louis, MO 63119
> (314) 961-2660 x7811
> kgaynor at webster.edu
>
>
>
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