mindgraffiti

How To Handle Repetitive Tasks for Static Sites

The Scenario

Let’s say the customer has a spreadsheet with over 200 items (like 200 bulls) and 20 different detailed entries (say, for example, their stats) filled in for each one. While it’s great that the customer wants to offer this information in a print-friendly and easy to use format, they now want you to link off each name to its detailed information page.

The Barriers

Oh, great, I think. Now what do I do? I don’t have access to a database, nor to any server side scripts. Crunch time means I have no time to research an AJAX solution, so all I can do is serve up static pages. Or at least, these are the barriers I faced. The best solution I could come up with was to use two links: one to download the spreadsheet, so customers are free to sort and manipulate the data as they please; the other a web page that contained the links to each item’s detailed page. While the majority of the link is all the same HTML, the item numbers differ. What is the easiest way to link each one of these items with the least amount of work?

The Solutions

At first I thought it would be best to change the spreadsheet into a PDF and manually link each item name to its page. Then I thought it might be best to open the spreadsheet application and use the ‘apply hyperlink’ feature to each name, then convert it to a PDF. As I dreaded the foreseen hours and hours of legwork ahead of me, I asked my co-worker Tim if he knew any shortcuts. In a brief 15-minute tutorial, he showed me the easiest way to manipulate iterative data, using only a spreadsheet application and a text editor – today’s software flavors included Excel and BBEdit.

Related links:

• The Process: Manipulating Data for Static Sites