@Hyperbytes, thanks so much, it is 1700 17 hundred pages of static, not 17000 17 thousand, lol, I would never finish.
The client unfortunately is upgrading their website from a dynamic site i made about 4 years ago, and we have spent the last 4 years arguing because all of a sudden they will want one image larger than all the rest, so in other words lets say i have a page with 3 columns and each has a product spanning 4 columns, then they phone and say, ahh we have a super special product, can you make it span all 12 columns, which i then have to explain to them that all 400 product pages are the same, and the data comes in dynamically from the database, so i can make it that way on 400 pages, or i can just do one as a custom page but it will take longer and cost more.
Of course they never understand, after many many fights with them, and almost loosing this client 3 times, they have said I must redo the site in such a way that if they want something different to every other page then that what they want.
I am charging them tripple, and have a 4 month deadline rather than the first build where i only had a month, but it looks like the only time saving is going to be by using templates to make each page.
@TomD, I do not really know if the amount of images in a folder over FTP has a limit, but I do know that on a mac in cyberduck as an FTP Client, that when i open a folder with 10000 or more images in it, it throws a warning to tell me it will take a while, and then becomes very unresponsive, so when i want to add another 10 images every week or so I often land up having to do it through the cPanel File Manager rather as Cyberduck just takes way too long.
@mrbdrm, that might also be a good solution, i will have to try that out, thanks for the idea.
My original question was really just an example, but what is really the use is.
I have a website that has logos and colours all geared towards bush safaris, with browns and greens and a logo of a giraffe. Over the years they have started adding many island destinations to the website as well, and sometimes they have holiday packages that include 5 days in the bush and 5 days on an island resort.
The island stuff looks out of place with Giraffe logos and greens and browns, so they want the island stuff to all be blues with a logo of a turtle, which seemed easy, however here is the trick.
If the user goes onto the homepage which will remain a bush feel, and clicks on an island page, it must all change to the island theme, then from there if they click a generic page like the about us page, it must all remain in the island theme, if they specifically click a bush page then the theme will change to bush theme, and if they clicked a generic page like about us again, then it must be bush theme.
So a single about us page could be bush or island theme depending on where they are starting from.
Therefore i need to store something that tells the next page when opening what theme colours to show.
Hope that makes sense.