total newbie Q... templating

traderx

Hello I am totally new to php and just starting reading the manual and thought I would ask this question before I get to involved and find that it's not what I was hoping for.

I am starting to develop a site (www.4xtraders.com) 'based' around vBulletin. The sites major focus with be a forum board, but I would like to to have other areas that use php to make it dynamic as 'I' can make/start with.

Now I am hoping to completely blend vBulletin to my site and don't want to use any frames. Basically laid out in this fashion - Left side (menu bar), top side (log and other menu bars), right side (hoping to have real time data feeds etc...), the center (main content / forum board), bottom basically the standard that is use with vBulletin.

Now after planning out my site, I started to think that of the areas that were out side of the forum board driven by vBulletin I would need to create all sides of the site (left, top, right, center, bottom). So lets say that I have changed my data feed (on the right), is there a way that I can just change a file (um... right.php) and by changing that file it will, in turn change all pages that would use or have reference to right.php, such a in glossary.php main page?

I hope someone is able to understand my point... I would like to have a good size site, but not at the cost that I am spending days changing all my pages just because of a minor/small alteration.

After playing around with vBulletin, I found several references to other php pages (i.e. navbar.php) inside the index.php

I have tried to play with this but doesn't seem to do with trying to view with Dreamweaver.

Thank you in advance to all to can help
Coll
collb@jaxen.com

Carello

I'm not sure this will help in any way, but have you considered using <IFRAME> ?
Although it's kind of a frame, it can be wrapped inside a HTML document, like in a table column and such.

traderx

Pretty new to the html thing.... but would be willing to take a look at it.

My main concern is because of different monitor sizes (mine is a 26 inch) that if someone resizes the window I don't want those menu scrolls to show up but to be able to have table that the right.php is inserted to use a percentage......

Q.... been looking around, what I am talking about is basically a header and footer correct?

I just need to find a way to have them on the sides and center 🙂

coll

panreach

<table width="100%" height="100%">
  <tr>
    <td>
      <?=include("left.php")?>
    <td>
    <td width="800px">
      <?=include("vBulletin.php")?>
    </td>
    <td>
      <?=include("right.php")?>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

is this what your talking about? It is standard to design for an 800 pixel width screen. Most home users never change windows factory setting of this screen width.

panreach

or better yet
have an index.php page control your site and then if the vBulletin page needs to be dispayled do something like:

<?
##this file is: index.php##
##possible url: index.php?var1=notblah&var2=blahblah&var3=blahblahblah

if ($var1="blah") {
  $includepath1=("somepage.php");
}
else {
  $includepath1=("differentpage.php");
}

if ($var2="blahblah") {
  $includepath2=("vbulletin_query_results.php");
}
else {
  $includepath2=("vbulletin_topics.php");
}


if ($var3="blahblahblah") {
  $includepath3=("greatpage.php");
}
else {
  $includepath3=("groovypage.php");
}

include("mypage.php");
?>

<?
###this file is mypage.php###
?>

<table width="100%" height="100%">
  <tr>
    <td>
      <?=$includepath1?>
    <td>
    <td width="800px">
      <?=$includepath2?>
    </td>
    <td>
      <?=$includepath3?>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

working off of an index page (or whatever page you want) you can control your site with one page rather than adding a header and footer to each page. This would be more like an Application approach. It's much more efficient to just have template pages and throw content into your templates like with this example.

leatherback

Or even better.. Use stylesheets for your layout..

Have a look here for an example

planetsim

Pretty new to the html thing....

Did i read that correctly 😕

HTML maybe easy to learn than PHP, but you shouldnt learn it while trying to undertake PHP or any language similar.

When i was thinking of learning PHP i was told this and i still havent forgotten.

Learn HTML to a level where you know the tags without requiring the use of reference. Now once you have the grasp of HTML like that than PHP is next to take on.