Simple PHP Template

influx

Hey there,

I am redesigning my website, and I hate the way Dreamweaver makes templates to handle. So, I am simply making a header.php and footer.php that I include into every page.

Now, my question is this: In the header.php and footer.php files, should all my links be directed to my URL (i.e: 'www.hello.com/img/layout/bg.gif') or should they be given paths (i.e: '../img/layout/bg.gif')? If I want to use paths, do I need to use a root command?

Thanks in advance for your help!
-influx

bpat1434

In all my php days, I haven't run into a problem of images not showing up using relative paths (../images/image2.jpg).

What you could do is set a variable in each page (or global config page that is included) and then when you need to define where an image comes from use this:

$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/images/image2.jpg';

Now, $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] will put you just inside the public_html folder, or your web root. So all paths will lead from there. Always, always, always start the extended string with a slash, or you'll get an error.

Use either method. I haven't seen anything really harmful come from it, unless you have pages that span multiple levels (folders). Then you would be wise to use the $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] technique.

~Brett

influx

Since my pages for my website do, in fact, span multiple directories, I would have to use the DOCUMENT_ROOT command.

However, all it does is output image sources like so:

<img src="/var/www/hello.com/new/img/layout/spacer.gif">

which render the whole line useless to me.

Would it be unwise to put full paths in the image source (i.e: <img src="http://www.hello.com/new/img/layout/spacer.gif">)

or should I not have my website span multiple directories?

bpat1434

What does your code look like?

You could always try:

$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/images/image2.jpg';

~Brett

influx

would it be a bad idea to simply use SSI as a templating technique in place of php?

What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?

Since I have so many pages that span different directories...I want to be able to point to ONE template for each page, and have the template deal with all the image sources, links, etc.

bpat1434

I don't know much about what you're asking now.

Why is Dreamweaver not a good template tool? It's what I use as a template manager (http://www.winfieldvfd.org) and it works perfectly fine. What problems do you see with it?

~Brett

laserlight

The way that I use is to have a $path_prefix variable or some equivalent.

so something like
$path_prefix = '../../";

My template itself uses this variable, and so when the template files are included on a given page, all the relative paths are updated accordingly.

influx

My website receives many many hits daily, and I anticipate it reaching tens of thousands of hits daily within the years end.

For that matter, I want the most efficient and universal way of making a template. Dreamweaver templates are just ugly to work with, they leave the code very scattered and leave remnants of code that I would much rather not have.

What do mainstream sites like yahoo.com, xanga.com, ebay.com, etc. use?

rehfeld

using $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] is a good idea for includes and internal file paths, but to a visitor, the path doesnt exists

you can just use a slash in front of the img paths to mimic the effect

for example:

visitor is on this page:
example.org/dir/subdir/page.php

and there is the following img tag:
<img src="image.gif">

the browser will look for the image at:
example.org/dir/subdir/image.gif

we all know that...

but change the img tag to this:
<img src="/image.gif">

and now the browser will look for the image at:
example.org/image.gif

the leading slash means a file path is relative to the root. in the case of urls, the root is the domain itself.

i almost ALWAYS specify all img paths like that. it will save you a lot of headaches.