i'm not quite sure i understood what exactly you need to do, but if you need to build simple site where layout and content are separate then there are few common approaches here. first is to include file containing data within layout file. you just do:
layout stuff goes here
...
include('content.php');
...
layout stuff goes here
where you need to have the content in your code. downside to this is that if you're including several files depending on, say, the link user clicked, then you have to pass the parameters and check them for validity to avoid including unwanted files in result of tampering with the url (we all like to try this, don't we 🙂.
other common way is to split your layout into header & footer files and then from within your content file just include those around your content:
include('header.php');
...
content & stuff goes here
...
include('footer.php');
advantage of this way doing it is that you dont have to pass parameters to simply call another file. thats actually good in some cases (netscape 4.x seems to having problems passing anchors when two or more parameters are present, sometimes imagemaps stop working as a result). also you don't have to do sanity checks since you always know what are you inculding.
see include(), include_once(), require() and require_once() in manual.
of course, you can always pull the content from the db as previous poster noted, its very sexy nowadays and chicks dig it. but when doing so, don't pass any parameters directly to database functions, always parse them first and do some magic stuff to ensure no wiseguys could retrieve arbitrary data as result.
pardon, if this is not what you needed. its like 7:50 AM here and i think that i'm awake, though i'm not entirely sure 🙂
