Can PHP solve my HTML problems?

adamsblueguitar

I know HTML, but I don't know PHP. I've read a few of the tutorials, and it sounds very interesting and very promising. Here's my question:

I've got a simple personal website: http://www.adamsblueguitar.com

I'd like the top table banner, the menu on the left table, and the few things in the right table to stay the same on every page. When I change/add something to the menu, I'd like it to change it on EVERY page, not just index.html.

The ONLY thing I want to change from page to page, is that middle table of content.

The way I have it now, just tables, if I change something about the top, left, or right table, I have to change it on EVERY single page, and it gets quite tedious. :bemused:

Can PHP help me? If so, any suggestions?

rachel2004

Whether you do it in HTML or PHP, what you need is some sort of templating system. If all you want is a templating system, then you don't need PHP to parse your pages. Something like Dreamweaver or another HTML editor should make your life much easier. If you decide you do want to use PHP to do templating (and go beyond a static web page), there is a PEAR package that could do it.
http://pear.php.net/packages.php?catpid=10&catname=HTML&pageID=2
See HTML_Template_It at that link.

adamsblueguitar

I just googled it and found that Dreamweaver is $399. Ouch. Is that the cheapest price? If so, are there any free editors that will do the job?

If not, PHP may be what I need.

drew010

one of the simplest ways of doing what you want to do is to use the [man]include[/man] function.

what you will need to do, is look at the full html of one of your pages. determine where the common "top" portion of the page ends, and your content that varies from page to page starts. copy that into a file called header.html. then find where your content ends and the common "bottom" part starts. copy that html into footer.html.

create a test php page and call it anything you want, but make sure the .php extension is on it. put this inside:

<?php include("header.html"); ?>

Here is all your html content for the various pages.........

<?php include("footer.html"); ?>

now upload that to a server that has php support and when you call it from the browser, it will bring the content of the header in, then output the middle html and then bring in the content from the footer, essentially gluing your page together.  that way you make all your pages in this format, and all you will need to edit is header and footer.html and the change will reflect over all the pages.

adamsblueguitar

Thank you Drew! That's exactly what I was looking for. I'll go to work on that immediately!

One question though, can I still have my main page as index.html? Or simply adamsblueguitar.com?

Or will I need to make an HTML intro page that links to the main PHP page?

drew010

you can keep your main page as you want. the only requirement for the php pages to work is that they must have a .php extension. so you can redo your index.html page to be index.php and it will still work by typing only your domain name.