Using Frames on websites

Layout - Using Frames

Frames technology allows you to have more than one web page on your screen at the same time.

Typically a frames site will include a navigation menu down the side or across the top, with the main or contents page filling the rest of the screen, however the number of frames and what you use them for is only limited by your screen.

There is a time and a place for using frames, for example for example if you offer a members area or online email to your visitors, so I have included below a section on how to build a site with frames.

If you want your pages to be found easily on search engines then frames are not the best solution. For more information see our page on web page optimization.

Click here to see how to create HTML code for frames

Advantages of frames

Frames are one way to make your site easy to navigate because you can have a constantly visible navigation menu - and easy navigation is one of the most important aspects of website design.
Frames can make your site faster because you can include the site theme (images, logo, etc..) and the navigation menu in frames that do not have to download each time a visitor looks at a new page. Only the contents page changes.
Using frames can make site maintenance easy, especially if you have a large site. If for example you want to add a new page that is linked from the other pages on your site, you simply add a link on your navigation menu; you do not have to add links on each and every page.

However you can get similar results using file includes (more later). You can also buy software like Dreamweaver which allows the use of templates. You create a template and then create the pages for your site based on this template. Then whenever you make a change on the template, the web pages based on this template can be automatically updated.

Disadvantages of frames

The original argument was that not all browsers support frames, but this must be a very small percentage now. You can get around this by including a area below your frameset. In this noframes area you can include information such as a simple navigation menu and a "Sorry your browser does not support frames" statement - OR if you want you can have a separate version of your website for non-frames browsers but be prepared to do twice as much work maintaining the site.
Search engines treat frames as hyperlinks to other pages, so if for example they manage to spider the frame containing your menu, they pages they index will be indexed but without the surrounding frames. If someone finds one or your pages on a search engine they will not be able to navigate around your site.
The most important disadvantage is that it is difficult to link to a particular page on your site other than the page containing the frames (usually the homepage) - this is a big disadvantage if you use email to market your site and you want to link to different parts of your web site.

You can use redirection however this is no use if you want the page to be spidered by the search engines. Search engines regard redirection as a form of spam because you could optimize a page for the search engines with all the right keywords and then redirect the visitor to a completely different page where the content is not 100% relevant to the search.

Redirection can have its uses however, for example if you change your URL and want to redirect any traffic from the old address to the new one. You can redirect visitors to another page simply by putting a Javascript in the HEAD area of your page.

However a better way to do this is use a 301 redirect because javascript redirection is not liked by search engines. You do this by saving a simple text file with an .htaccess extension and uploading this to the root folder on your site. Note however that this only works on Linux hosted sites. In Windows you have to use ASP code or get the server admin to change the settings on the server itself. The following code should work on Linux but check with your web host as the settings can vary.

arrowdown Frames HTML code