I have created a web page ( http://www.un.org/smallislands2005/ ). I
want to be able to update the navigation bar on the left hand side -
the side with: calendar, basic info, etc -  (some of the buttons have
drop-down menus) once and have the changes
reflected throughout the site. Currently I have to make the changes
manually on each page that has the navigation buttons. How do I do
this?

Hi ahuta. You have a good question that I had an issue with recently. 

The ability to save a webpage as a template is a solution that
remedies this situation. Saving as a template and working with the
template panel gives you the option of entering a repeating region in
your code.

The nice thing about templates is that they provide content control. 
:-)

Here is a pretty short tutorial on how to create a template setup for
when you have pages that are going to have consistencies. In your
case, this seems ideal as the example is a business site that is going
to have some of the same content (logo, subsections, etc.) on each
page that is built with the template.

You'll want your template to be based on a stripped down version of
your index page so that you can build future pages to it and when
changes need to be made to items in your template, the changes will be
across the board to the other pages that access that template. :-)

http://www.macromedia.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?event=view&id=KC.tn_16282&extid=tn_16282&dialogID=557226&iterationID=1&sessionID=9630825008fa$3FK$3FI&stateID=0%200%20559430&mode=simple

- Fletch