Hi

I was wondering if someone could tell me if this is possible.

To have nested pages. header, left content, content, right content and footer master pages.

the header and the footer will be the same all of the time.

However since the right content is always the same (eg server status, news etc) I would prefer to have the server status, news etc in different aspx pages which fill up ...but not sure if it possible or if it would even show on the end page.

or would it be best to have a single master page since header and footer stay same.  and then for the left content....have my three content holder and on the aspx page referance ascx page which hold the the code for retrieving server information and just do the following for each of the three content place holders? Like so

<contentplaceholder id="left1" > 

<serverinfo id="server" /> 

</contentplaceholder />

My only issue with this is that it is not dynamic which means I have to place the surounding images for the border for each of my blocks

I be greatful for any experience anyone has had or could give on this as I am not sure if you can create ascx pages to do the following.

If I understand correctly, best is to build one Master Page that contains a header, footer, tree navigation (left content), content placeholder for the main content and a user control (ascx) for the right content. Now you can place your content in different .aspx files and your server status in a user control.

You can learn more about master pages in this How Do I Video on Master Pages and more in depth information in this OdeToCode article by Scott Allan.

Good luck.

thanks for the reply....

that is pretty much what I thought would be required.

Is there a performace hit from using server control ascx files? As I could be using two or three of them...to display database data...and server status.

Everything costs. However a user control (ascx) is compiled by asp.net at runtime (and cached), so that won't be much of a problem. A user control can make maintaining your website easier, so I think this is even of more importance. But when performance is really a big issue I advice you to messure your site it under heavy load (stress test it).

Good luck.