Web Wiz Forums - Edit forum design

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Edit forum design

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Category: Web Wiz Web App Support Forums
Forum Name: Web Wiz Forums
Forum Description: Support forum for Web Wiz Forums application.
URL: https://forums.webwiz.net/forum_posts.asp?TID=13764
Printed Date: 12 April 2026 at 4:23am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.08 - https://www.webwizforums.com

Topic: Edit forum design

Posted By: jackbros
Subject: Edit forum design
Date Posted: 10 February 2005 at 3:10pm

Hi there,

I want to edit the registration page as I would like to insert more fields.

The whole forum is created with response.write statements making it difficult for me to design visually. How do I get around this. What program will allow me to design visually using this code. I currently use dreamweaver mx.

Thanks

Replies:

Posted By: dpyers
Date Posted: 13 February 2005 at 5:16pm

The forum pages are basically server-side script that produces html.

There's no visual representation available as the scripting languages can, and usually do, write html conditionally

- e.g. If x then write "HI" else write "BYE".

A visual editor would have no way of figuring out which word to display.

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Lead me not into temptation... I know the short cut, follow me.

Posted By: jackbros
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 7:17am

How does one produce this forum then, is it just coded without the visual part?

Posted By: dj air
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 7:25am

unless you know of a program that can read asp then you have to write the code by had.

also means you have to visualise the code in your head.

Posted By: jackbros
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 7:52am

IS this how web wiz forums was produced?

What is the need for Response write when you can just as well use straight text

If a="" then %> Hello

If a="" then write "Hello"

This way one can design as they go?

Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 10:00am

Originally I did design the forum in Dreamweaver, but over the years so much ASP code has been added that almost every line is now ASP.

For the last few years all the code I have written for this forum has had to be done in a text editor with no WYSIWYG page display for editing.

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Posted By: dj air
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 10:09am

really this is the best way, and you get to learn the code even more.

and in the long term it saves when adding the asp if statements which can couse display problems and interm you have to write in code anyway.

Posted By: dpyers
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 10:15am

HTML is not a programming language. It is a language that tells you how to display content. A web browser only deals with how content is dsplayed.

Visual editors only deal with how content is displayed, not with the variables behind it's creation.

asp is a programming language that allows you to conditionally create both the content, and how it's to be displayed. It also allows you to interact with other server-side resources programmatically to enable functions for your web-app - e.g. uploads, mail, analyse user or request info, create security, etc.

What your doing is building a web application, not web pages.

Web applications are typically broken up into client (browser) and server code.

When you request an asp page from a server, it runs the code and returns html. Your browser then loads the html and ececutes any client-side code (usually javascript) that enables things like menu animation, and displays it.

A visual environment cannot represent the logic in either the server side code or the client side code. It can only represent how content is to be displayed.

Perhaps a better example of server-side code would be a page where you ask a client to enter a group of code and corresponding information fields. The asp for processing that code could be doing something on the server like...

If code = A, display information

If code = B, email information

If code = C, update data base with information

If code = blank and information not = blank, display an error

If code not = blank and information = blank, display a different error

If code = blank and information = blank capture browser header info, email to security, send user to a different page.

If code not = blank process next set of fields else end further processing.

You have a lot of options for each pair of fields and you could have hundreds of field pairs on the page. Can't think of how you could deal with that in a visual editor.

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Lead me not into temptation... I know the short cut, follow me.

Posted By: jackbros
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 10:29am

Excuse me for being dumb, but I still cannot see the use for the

If a="" then write "Hello"

as opposed to

If a="" then %> Hello

With the second one you get a visual if you need it. What are the advantages/disadvantages?

Posted By: WebWiz-Bruce
Date Posted: 14 February 2005 at 10:46am

The registration page 'register.asp' is written in the way you have it in your second example:-

If a="" then %> Hello

It's just that there are so many ASP variables and 'if then' blocks within the HTML most WYSIWYG Editors can not handle the amount of ASP within the HTML and so can not display the page correctly for editing.

Here is an example of the register.asp page:-

<tr bgcolor="<% = strTableColour %>" background="<% = strTableBgImage %>">

         <td valign="top"
height="2" class="text" background="<% = strTableBgImage
%>"><% = strTxtSelectAvatar %>

          <br
/><span class="smText"><% = strTxtSelectAvatarDetails &
intAvatarHeight & " x " & intAvatarWidth & " " &
strTxtPixels %>).</span></td>

         <td valign="top" height="2" background="<% = strTableBgImage %>" >

          <table
width="290" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="1">

The top part of the page where most of the ASP code is in the first 1200 lines, it is just for processing entered data and not for page display.

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