Passing title variable with header page

[scrupply]

I am trying to pass a title from a normal .php page to a header .php page. What would you recommend?

[sarahk]

what is the actual requirement, what will you do with the title?

[scrupply]

I am new to PHP and creating a site for my family. I created a header and footer so that it would wrap around anything that someone in my family wanted to put up. Problem is that they would all have the title that the header has, unless I pass the title from the page that is being created. Make sense? I am deifintely trying to learn. Thanks

[sarahk]

Right-o

So when you talk about title you're actually talking about some sort of banner at the top and bottom of the page.

There are several strategies and you kindof have to commit yourself to one and run with it initially.

1) use your directory structure so that the home page might be
http://www.adamsfamily.com/
but after that people go to
http://www.adamsfamily.com/mom/
http://www.adamsfamily.com/dad/

in which case all the pages are unique and can be any which way. That leads to quicker page creation but alot more maintenance.

2) Each page link passes a variable eg
http://www.adamsfamily.com/holiday.php?who=mom
and so holiday.php knows to put Mom's header and footer up. Search engines hate it but that's probably ok for a family site.

3) Get your ISP to allow you to have the following urls
http://mom.adamsfamily.com/
http://dad.adamsfamily.com/
and your script then looks to find out what the first bit is and includes the right header and footer (as in 2) but this is more search engine friendly.

So... what should these headers and footers look like?

I'd make then .php files, which means they can be pure html or they can include php code as well. I'd have a file called momh.php and momf.php, dadh.php and dadf.php and depending on who I'm following I include the appropriate header.

The links on the page can be built at run time to ensure that they also follow the strategy you have put in place.

I use templates but that's not essential. Check out what I do at http://www.pcpropertymanager.com/free_trial and at http://www.pcpropertymanager.com/esc/free_trial - it's the same page, I just change things around depending on who I'm representing.

repost with more questions once you've had a chance to think all this through.