title: Expression Web: dynamic web templates vs. master pages in a large website
body: <p>I'm trying to decide the best way to provide templates for a bunch of not very technical web editors.  Their tool will be Expression Web 3 (finally migrating away from Frontpage).  They maintain two websites sites that have around 9,000 pages each.  (fun, eh?)</p>
  
  <p>My big hesitation about dynamic web templates is how pages get updated.  If I have to change any of the common content, all "attached" webpages are physically modified using Frontpage-like metadata.  That seems crazily redundant and prone to error.</p>
  
  <p>An issue with master pages is that most web editors connect to subwebs instead of the root of the site for security reasons (so department A cannot screw up department B's content).  In that scenario, I have to maintain a copy of the master page in every subweb because Expression Web will not allow them to browse back to the root. </p>
  
  <p>With both template technologies, the web editors do not even see the header/footer at design time if I use server-side includes(!!).</p>
  
  <p>So far I'm leaning towards master pages with server-side includes for actual header/footer. 
  How would you approach this?</p>