I''m working on a small project (5 major pages, 1 with 4 linked off, 1 with 3 linked off) and I was going to just do it all in flat html files with dreamweaver templates (yeah, I was being kinda lazy). I got the sigle page sections done and find out, it would really be nice to do this page in with a database (list of new products). So I thought, hey maybe this is a good use for rails (don''t laugh! I''m desperate for an excuse). After about 1 hour I had my dreamweaver pages put into a rails project with the layout.rhtml and the contents broken out into template files. I was nearly giggling with joy. I made a Page controller with these actions: index, about, contact, products and information. The Page template has a sidebar menu, @submenu to render as partial template Information needs a sidebar menu, so in the method information specified the name of the template to render :partial=>@submenu Also in the Page controller I had methods information_safety, information_fundraising, and information_faq ... each setting @submenu to "info_menu" Then I come to the product section, which has 4 sections and I did the same thing. It worked. (so far no database interation) Then I thought, maybe the better design was to create a Product controller. So I did. I set the submenu template name in the initialize method, and told it to use layout "Page" I tweaked the link in the layout/page.rhtml to call the Product controller. It worked. Which is the better way or are both ways stupid and you have a better one? :) -- http://PhpGirl.blogger.com http://CodeSnipers.com