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We have a site, which has a main site served by Google Sites and a custom made forum running on a dedicated server. Now we want to use the header from Google Sites also on the forum, so it feels like the same site. I first tried creating an IFrame on the main site and placing the forum inside this IFrame. This looked nice, but I did not find a way to make direct links. The URL always was Open-Org.com no matter which topic on the forum one clicked at.

I have thought about simply copying the relevant HTML code, but this means that I have to recopy it every time the header on the main page changes. Is there a nicer way to do such a thing? It must be a problem that many sites needs to solve.

If what I am describing is unclear, there are more specific information here.

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closed as off topic by Su', John Conde♦ Sep 27 '12 at 1:07

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1 Answer

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On your dedicated server create and run a script that retrieves the HTML of a page from your site hosted at Google Sites. Have it parse that file to retrieve the header HTML. Then have the script update the header file for your forum.

Tips:

  • You will make your life a lot easier if you use comments to delimit where the header ends so the parse knows where to stop.
  • Before parsing the text check the last modified time of the file. If it hasn't changed then don't bother parsing it.
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Thanks! If you would like to get your hands dirty, you are very welcome to implement this task. You can find details about payment etc here: forum.open-org.com/q177/…. To get yourself a server running the forum software, you just need an Amazon Web Service account. You can launch the server using this simple web application: open-org.com/develop-open-orgcom – David Apr 18 '12 at 0:21

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