Gulf Coast Composite offers services to the petro-chemical complex in the surrounding Houston-Pasadena-Texas City area, fabricates carbon fiber components for NASA and the local aviation industry, and supports the boating and marine industries around Galveston Bay. Gulf Coast Composite wanted their web site to showcase how their services were being used by an unusually wide range of industries. In addition, there was a need to make the public aware of the metalworking and woodworking capabilities of the shop, as two other businesses specializing in those fields share the facilities. The owner wanted active content (constantly changing, controllable text and images) and a navigation aid to prevent users from getting lost on the site.

Bayview Internet Group suggested combining the navigation aid with a constantly-changing, 'SideBar' image in a narrow column along the left side margin. Whenever the user is on the 'Home' page, a randomly-selected image appears in the SideBar. When the user navigates to a link under one of the categories offered in the link bar, the left side margin displays a graphic reflecting that category.

For example, whenever a new link is added to one of the nav bar categories, the left side graphic reflects that category automatically. In the screen shot to the left, a link under 'Marine' was selected which resulted in the use of the left side 'Marine' graphic.

Also, notice the link to the 'Home' page that appears in the upper left corner. Although any page in a Bayview Internet Site may be designated as the home page, a link to 'Home' always appears when viewing any other page.

As a side note, the majority of images in a Bayview Internet Site can be enlarged to a user specified size by clicking on the image. The 'Screen Shots' on this page are scalable, and are best viewed using the 'High Quality' radio button, with the width set at 800 or higher.

The owner of the Gulf Coast site uses simple tools for managing the home page images, and controlling the frequency by which they change. The picture to the left shows how simple it is to add or delete images to the SideBar rotation for the 'Home' page. The upper part of the picture shows the site logo, the site title, and the Administration Page menu. Under 'Site', the 'Layout' option has been selected, which resulted in the appearance of the area labeled 'Maintain Site Layout'. In the 'Maintain Site Layout' area, the button labeled, 'SideBar Images' has been clicked, resulting in the new window, 'Add or Delete Images'. Here, images can be loaded directly from your computer, or deleted altogether from the rotation. Also, notice the frequency control. In the screen shot, it is set to 'Every Hit', which results in a randomly selected image being displayed in the sidebar. The user can select from a variety of time based frequencies: Daily, Daily - Week, Daily - Month, Monthly, Weekly, Every Minute, etc.

The Gulf Coast Composite layout only has a single feature that provides active content (the SideBar). The site you are currently viewing, the 'Bayview Internet Sites' web site, has numerous user-controllable areas in its layout. The slogan area underneath the logo, the Breaking News box, the left side image, and the footer image are all programmable using the same, simple tools. Quick, intuitive, and powerful, these tools put you in control of active content on your web site.