An Old Site Still Built in Frames

The address that never changes

A client of an insurance brokerage wants to send a friend the page about tenant insurance. She copies the address from the browser, and her friend receives the home page.

She clicks around the brokerage's site to check. Whichever page she opens, the address bar shows the same short address, and so does every bookmark she makes.

The site was built years ago in frames, and nothing on it can be pointed at except the front door.

How a framed site is put together

Frames were an early way of building a site from separate files. One file, the frameset, divides the window into panes and loads a different file into each.

Typically the logo sits in a narrow pane along the top, the menu in another down the side, and the content in the largest pane. Clicking the menu swaps only the content file.

The address bar shows the frameset, which never changes, so the browser has no way of recording which content file is showing.

What frames break

That single design decision causes trouble well beyond bookmarks:

• Shared links, which all open the home page.
• Search results, which open content files alone, without menu or logo.
• Page titles, which show the frameset's title on every page.
• Phones, which squeeze several panes onto a small screen.
• Visit counts, which may record only the frameset.
• Printing, which often prints one pane and loses the rest.

The second costs the most, because it affects people who have never seen the site and are deciding from one page whether to stay.

Search results that open half a page

Search engines index the content files themselves, since that is where the words are. A searcher who clicks a result lands on that file alone: no logo, no menu, often no phone number.

With nowhere to go, many leave. The page looks unfinished, and nothing on it suggests the rest of the site exists.

Google has long said that frames sit badly with the way search engines see the web, where one address shows one page. A framed site breaks that rule on every click.

Phones and frames

Frames divide the screen by fixed shares. On a phone the menu pane takes its share of a narrow screen, the content is squeezed beside it, and text shrinks to fit.

Scrolling one pane while the others stay still is awkward with a finger. A framed layout cannot be rearranged for small screens the way a single responsive page can.

And many visitors now arrive on a phone first.

A worked example

A spring manufacturer in an industrial park makes compression, extension and torsion springs to order for equipment makers, repair shops and machine builders, with about a dozen staff.

Its site was built in frames in the late nineties: logo along the top, menu on the left, and content pages for each spring type, the materials, a stock catalogue and a quote request form.

A purchasing agent at a customer wanted to send an engineer the torsion spring page and could not. The link opened the home page every time.

A look at the search results found the content files listed alone, titled with their file names, and opening with no menu, logo or phone number in sight.

The site was rebuilt as ordinary pages, one per spring type plus materials, catalogue and quote request, each with the menu, the logo and the phone number, in a layout that adjusts to phones.

Each old content file now redirects permanently to its new page. Links can be shared and bookmarked, and a searcher who lands anywhere sees a complete page.

Why patches do not hold

There are old fixes that push a content file back inside its frameset when it is opened alone. They hide one symptom and leave the rest.

The address bar still never changes, the title is still the same everywhere, and phones still get panes. The patch also adds a flicker and a second load on every arrival.

Rebuilding as ordinary pages

The rebuild keeps the content and changes the structure. Each page becomes a complete document with its own address, title, menu and contact details, built from one shared template.

It is also the moment to rewrite. Text written for the late nineties usually needs updating, and pages that nobody visits can be merged or dropped.

The HTML5 standard, finalised in October, lists frames among obsolete features. Browsers still display them, but nobody builds new sites that way.

Keeping the old addresses working

Search engines and old bookmarks know the content files by their names. Redirect each one permanently to the page that replaces it, so visitors and search engines arrive at the right place.

After launch, watch the crawl errors in Webmaster Tools for a few weeks. Any old address that turns up there without a redirect can be added to the list.

Update the addresses you control as well: links in email signatures, on social profiles and in directory listings that point at an old file.

The counter-case

Not every frame is a problem. A map or a video embedded in an ordinary page sits in an inline frame, and that is normal and harmless.

An internal tool used only by staff on office computers can wait for its own replacement if it works, since nobody needs to share or find its pages.

But public pages built in frames cannot be repaired into ordinary ones. They have to be rebuilt, and the sooner that happens, the fewer customers meet half a page.

Planning the rebuild

1. List every content file and its address.
2. Check which ones appear in search results.
3. Plan one page for each piece of content worth keeping.
4. Rewrite the text while it is being moved.
5. Build one template that works on phones.
6. Redirect each old file to its new page.
7. Watch crawl errors for a few weeks after launch.

Step six protects everything the old site earned. Links from customers, suppliers and search engines point at the old files, and the redirects carry each of them to the right new page.

The new menu should stay short and plain, for the reasons covered in a mega menu on a site with twelve pages.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.