Newbie Template Question...

Anon

Hey.. I'm sure I'm going to sound like an idiot, but I'm ready to pull my hair out here. I just started to teach myself PHP Sunday, and I want to switch my blog over to PHP to make it easier to change layouts... I've read a book and looked all over, but I can't find a simple script to do this - probably because it's so basic huh? 🙂

Anyways, what I have now is header.php with the CSS and layout info... but I can't figure out how to make it initially make the blog show up in the content section, or quite frankly, how to even make a content section. Where all the content has to go, I just put:
<?php
include("blog.php");
?>
but of course, when I click the bio link, it won't show up... just the blog again. Not sure if I'm making sense... I know there are better templates out there but as you can see I can barely understand this one. 😉 Sorry if this is a repeated question... I searched but couldn't find anything that would help. Anyways, the site is at www.englishsun.org/test/ to get an idea at least of what I'm going for... thanks!

zalath

Hmm, I'm sure we would be able to help if you described the problem with a little more detail.. I visited your site, but still didn't catch the actual problem, so elaborate a little, will you?

-L-

Anon

Sure, sorry.. I'm just trying to figure out how to set up a simple template script to make it easier to change layouts... I've looked everywhere for tutorials, but they're all more complicated than what I need (ie FastTemplate). I would just like something using echo/include/require tags.

This is what my index.php file currently looks like:
<?php
$siteTitle = "Sample Site"; // This is the title of your website
$default = "blog"; // This is the filename for the default file you want called when no specific page is called.
$MainPage = "header.php"; // Main Template File
$Content = "./es"; // Location of Content

require ("header.php");

if ($es == bio){
include "bio.php";
}

And I suppose I'd have to add all the other subsections along with bio.php... The only thing is, when I plug in www.englishsun.org/test/, I get blog.php in the content area, which is what I want... but when I click on "bio," I just get the blog page again.

I don't know if that helps you figure out what I'm asking...

Anon

Ok, I think I can finally better define what I'm asking. When I load index.php, I want the content area to show blog.php as a default. Then, when clicking on a subsection (ie index.php?x=bio), the bio will show up in place of the blog. In my template/header file, this is what I currently have where I want the content to show up:

<?php
$x = basename($x);
if(!$x) {
include("blog.php");
} else {
include("$x"); }
?>

Obviously this is incorrect, because I get an error saying:
Warning: Failed opening 'bio' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php') in /home2/english/public_html/test/header.php on line 49

Please help...

wchris

Cause of this exception message, I think you have to write:
include ("../test/blog.php");

You have to write a path to your file, not only the file. I know it looks funny to go down and than up again, but try it ...