Are templates best?

[tikal]

Apologies if this should go in the Newbies forum.

I have been considering learning a template system like Smarty but a quick search of this forum shows mixed feelings about them.

Do those of you who have built large php driven websites use one of the more common template engines like Smarty, your own template engine or do you just not bother with template systems?

And, in your experience, do templates aid how quickly a site can be put together and make long-term maintenance easier?

Thx.

[Mark]

personally? i always make my sites from scratch, dont think i've ever used a "template"

[DigitalExpl0it]

ditto..

I make a one page template from scratch and then keep using it for other pages...Like header.php one template, footer.php another template then the main body another template

[axo]

oh, i must say i like templates very much, mostly to make a difference between php-code and html...

my wife always develops the html - and her version of dreamweaver doesn't like php code very much. so she makes templates, and generates some place holders, e.g. {ACTUAL_TIME} , {USERNAME}, {POST_TEXT} inside the html-templates which will be loaded into the php-script and replaced by the actual values.
i must say that since we work like that, there are much less parse errors 😃 😃

[batman]

You can actually make a template using .php
Have you ever seen the sites that have stuff like index.php?page=whatever?? You can make one page (index.php) and actually use it with all the pages. This makes editing very easy. Just edit the index.php page and all pages are updated as well. When you get the index.php page setup then add this code to where the main body section pf the page is going to be:

<?

$page = $_GET['page'];

if(!$_GET['page']) {
   include("incl/home.incl");
} else {
   include("incl/" . $_GET['page'] . ".incl");
}

?>

Follow these steps to set it up:

1). make a folder and name it incl

2). make just blank pages with the text that you want, then save them in the .incl format. E.G. contact.incl

3). Upload all the .incl files into the incl folder

4). When you want to call the pages, set your links like this:
<a href="index.php?page=contact">Contact Us</a>

It is an awesome feature that I use on most if not all of my sites. 🙂

[Mark]

thats accaully what i do... hehe, like this:

?
//you can change $page to anything you want, like $id, or $shutup
  if(!empty($page))
  {
  	include("$page.txt");
  }
  if(empty($page))
  {
    include("news.txt");
  }

?>

links would come out like www.somesite.com/?page=news
or
www.somesite.com/mypage.php?id=news

[axo]

but be careful... what if somebody requests e.g.
www.yourhost.com/?page=inc/database_passwords.inc ?

always think of exploits, will you ? 🙂

[Mark]

well since that doesnt work on mine, it probably doesnt matter.

[mystrymaster]

I thought about doing that however I did not understand the point since you can simply create a header and a footer and include them on every page and then you have the same effect without adding more logic and having less vulnerabilities.

[stolzyboy]

there aren't any vulnerabilities using the ?id=new method, even for the id=inc/dbpasswd.inc, since you are including it, the PHP will be parsed and they won't get the db passwords anyway

and even if there was, who's to say they couldn't navigate to that path without you using the ?id= method

[tekky]

Originally posted by stolzyboy
there aren't any vulnerabilities using the ?id=new method, even for the id=inc/dbpasswd.inc, since you are including it, the PHP will be parsed and they won't get the db passwords anyway

and even if there was, who's to say they couldn't navigate to that path without you using the ?id= method

on sites I've worked with like this...

it used 2 variables

"section" and "page"

section would point the index page to a directory... not necessarily the actual one.. and page would tell it to load a page besides index.inc

and the site did keep a dir structure... NOT all .inc files in 1 place...

and this DOESNT make it more complicated, as you dont use just 1 .inc for each page... you do use header.inc/footer.inc menu.inc whatever else you have templated out for the site....

www.xnet.org (if its even up anymore) is an example of a site done using that method