Oh, OK. There is an include function built into Frontier. 

I'm just now making it through the specifics of Dave's reaction to my mucking about in CSS.

I kind of wondered why there wasn't already a way to do an include. I found the insertFile script in the Frontier docs and thought it had to be added, but file.readWholeFile is already in there. So the process I described on Friday just got a lot more streamlined. (Windows instructions)

Make a directory under My Documents/opml/www called "newsriver" (same level as the "blog" dir), and put this file in it.

Edit the newsRiverWebsite.#template to insert this right under the metaTags macro.

<%file.readWholeFile ("C:\\Documents and Settings\\amy\\My Documents\\OPML\\www\\newsriver\\option.txt")%> [but put in your own path to your My Documents folder]

Now... well not exactly now, but after work or when I can get to it, I only need to learn how to make that path dynamic and folks won't have to edit anything in the database. I think it makes sense to have the text file in the www directory, doesn't it? Should it be right in www with no newsriver subdirectory?

But that's just to complete this possible method. I'll also look into the http include that Dave throws out. It sounds like that might end up being simpler still for any user. (Actually, I hope she doesn't mind, but as I'm doing this, I'm picturing somebody like Fran. She's a user who is smart and interested and willing to go to some trouble, but you wouldn't want to make her have to muck around in the object database.)

I'm trying to think ahead to possible future plans anyone might have to make the aggregator available separately. Or, if I'm beginning to correctly read Dave's ways of doing things, you might just package it as though the aggregator is all there is, but secretly sneak in everything else the editor can do so other features could be enabled at some point. Sort of like the way the server stuff is already in the editor just waiting to have some magic water sprinkled on it to rehydrate.

It's nice that Dave's taking the time to help grow a whole new crop of Frontier-conversant geeks. I think I'd have grown weary of doing that by this time. UserTalk is a neat language. Very sensible and economical and quite easy to figure out and debug. You don't need to spend a lot of time to pick up just what you need to do something because it's well-documented, too.