I don't use Smarty templating engine or any other template framework...perhaps I should...but anyways...here's how I normally design my sites, I know it's kinda "old school" but would like to hear your thoughts and perhaps get ideas on how you guys go about designing sites....

My design, whether it's based on dynamic or fixed width is usually as follows:

header.html
index.html
footer.html

The index.html is where all my pages are and the header/footer almost rarely changes. If I do need to make a change, then it affects all other pages since they all call the header/footer pages.

There are 2 issues I have with this design though.

1) Since I use Dreamweaver as my WYSWIG, the CSS is called from the header.html file. This means that when I am working on the (main body) page, I don't actually get to see the CSS affects since the page doesn't know about it. Only when I upload the page does it call the "header.html" file and the CSS is used.

I can though call the CSS temporarily within the file while working on it, but then I'd have to remove it so I don't call it twice...it's just a pain though.


2) If I want to change the overall design of the (body), this is where it causes a problem, because I would have to go through ALL the pages to change the whatever new style I come up with...



Anyways, this was my method and has always been my method to avoid using frames. I'm not sure if "frames" is even used anymore in today's designs??

Is it taboo??

So my question to you guys is, what are your techniques when it comes to overall design of a website? How do you design a site in which, if you come up with a new design, you don't have to go through numerous pages to update them?