What is the quick and easy way to update a navigation bar on a multipage website. I want the page to show where you are as well, currenly I am using a css id to keep track of what page you are on.

<div class="nav">
        <ul>
            <li id="current"><a href="some_url/">Home</a></li> <!-- CSS will display this link differently-->
            <li><a href="some_url">Somewhere else</a></li>
            <li><a href="some_url">Somewhere else2</a></li>
            <li><a href="some_url"">Somewhere else3</a></li>
        </ul>
</div>

That is the example I would use to show the current page with a css selector. I am familiar with SSI, but how can you maintain a different style for the link that you are on? Is there a way to script it, a different language to alleviate this issue or am I missing something simple?

The easiest way is to use a style sheet in css and link to each page like so:

 <link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='stylesheet1.css'> 

Copy and paste that navbar. Just make sure you use the same id's on each page

Or you could go a little more advance and create a template. Which im not so familar with. (more work then i'd like)

well thats kind of the issue in another way. then you would have multiple css sheets to maintain.

You can have one style sheet, then if you want to apply a different style to a link in the navigation to show the user the page they are on, on each page, apply a different ID.

For example, on page 1,

<div class="nav">
        <ul>
            <li id="current"><a href="some_url/">Home</a></li>
            <li><a class="currentPage" href="some_url">Somewhere else</a></li>
            <li><a href="some_url">Somewhere else2</a></li>
            <li><a href="some_url"">Somewhere else3</a></li>
        </ul>
</div>

Then page 2

<div class="nav">
        <ul>
            <li id="current"><a href="some_url/">Home</a></li>
            <li><a href="some_url">Somewhere else</a></li>
            <li><a class="currentPage" href="some_url">Somewhere else2</a></li>
            <li><a href="some_url"">Somewhere else3</a></li>
        </ul>
</div>

In your CSS,

.currentPage {color:red;}

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