## Referencing external content

Freeway allows you to include content in your site that is provided from an external location. An example might be an advertising banner, a counter that records how many visitors viewed your page, or text providing the latest news supplied by an external feed.

### To reference external content in a URL item

- Click the HTML icon in the toolbar and draw a box to contain the external content.
- Click the output settings icon at the top of the Inspector palette to display the item output settings and choose URL from the Type pop-up menu.
- Set the Content to Image to display an external image file, or HTML to include a snippet of HTML using a server side include, and enter the URL of the external content in the URL box:

- To supply alt text for the image select Alt Text and type the text into the corresponding box.

When you specify a URL item with Content set to Image, the URL you specify is inserted into the Freeway output inside an <img> tag; for example:

`<img src="/cgi-bin/counter.cgi"border=0>`

When you specify a URL item with Content set to HTML, the URL you specify is inserted into the Freeway output inside a `#include` statement; for example:

`<!- - #include virtual="included.inc"- ->`

Note: Referencing external HTML using a `#include` tag only works when the page is served by a Web server which supports server side includes. Check with your ISP whether this option is available on your server.

### To insert code at a specific point on a page

- Open the Insert menu and choose Markup Item....

The following dialog box allows you to specify the HTML code to be inserted on the page:

- Enter the code to be inserted and click the OK button.

A markup item will be displayed on the page:

You can move and resize the markup item as required on the page. The code contained in the markup item will be inserted in the page at the point corresponding to the item’s location on the page.

### To add an inline markup item

- Insert the text insertion point in an HTML item where you want to add the markup item.
- Open the Insert menu and choose Markup Item....

An icon will displayed to indicate the position of the markup item:

- To edit the HTML code double-click the icon.

### To import HTML content into an HTML item

If you have a standard section of HTML that you want to include in an existing page you can import an HTML text file into an HTML item.

- Select the HTML item (do not position the insertion point in the item):

- Open the File menu and choose Import....
- Select the file containing the snippet of HTML and click the Open button.

The imported HTML cannot be displayed or edited within Freeway, but it will be inserted when the page is previewed or published. For example, you might keep a standard copyright message on disk as an HTML file and include this on each page of your site in an HTML box:

When the site is published the latest version of the copyright text will be incorporated in each page of the site.

Contents