Dynamic page

caminator

Hey guys,

I am very inexperienced with PHP. I have only used it once or twice in the past....veyr limited. What I am trying to do is design a web "template" to use for my webpage. I would like to have a space in the code where all I have to do is edit that space to change the page, but the rest of the site stays the same.

On the other hand, if I want to edit the layout of my site, I'll I will have to do is change one little thing and it will change it for the entire site. I know this is possible (as I have kind of done it before--a loooong time ago), but I don't know how to do it.

Anyone here willing to help me set up my site so ti works in this way? Thanks so much in advance!!

g_stanton4142

I would use include as follows:

<?php
include('template_top.txt');
?>

YOUR CONTENT WHICH YOU WANT TO CHANGE GOES HERE

<?php
include('template_bottom.txt');
?>

There may be other ways to do this, but this has always been fine for me. The 2 text files are what you need to create. They contain the HTML which you want to use on EVERY page.

dotnotwhat

Alternatively, make your HTML template file and where you want your page specific content to go, insert a string of your choice. Something obscure like PAGE_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER, a string you can be sure won't be used in any other way within your template.

E.g.

<html>
<head>
<title>My Site</title>
</head>
<body>
PAGE_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER
</body>
</html>

Now in each of your PHP pages, you can generate your page content, store it as a string, open the template file for reading and string replace PAGE_CONTENT_PLACEHOLDER with your page content. Then just output whole thing to browser.

You could have several 'placeholders', one for main content, one for page title, meta keywords, etc. Tie it in with a database to store page content and a simple interface, you have the startings of a basic CMS.

Using this method, your template file can be a bit tidier and easier to manage (edit it in Dreamweaver for example, without having to chop it into multiple parts).

caminator

Thanks so much for the reply's. I really appreciate them, but because I am so new they are still a bit over my head. Hate to ask this, but any chance anyone can "dumb this down" for me? If so, thank you. I REALLY appreciate it.

snoopgreen

your first reply is probably the best to use

the include statement is basically a file which you would of created!
say all of your links around your site
and it will be saved in a different place to your main body of site
so maening when you need to change parts you can just edit that and the whole pages with that as an include file will change

the same is done for the bottom (footer)
these could be html , php etc

dotnotwhat

Make your template file. You can design this in Dreamweaver or roll it by hand, however you normally approach building a page. Where you want the main content to be, insert some text. In this example we'll use MY_PAGE_CONTENT.

E.g. mytemplate.html

<html>
<head>
<title>My Site</title>
</head>
<body>
MY_PAGE_CONTENT
</body>
</html>

Now, for each page you make, base it on the following example. This is very basic to demonstrate what is happening but it will work fine.

<?php

// Grab template.
$template = "mytemplate.html";
if (!$template_handle = fopen($template, "r"))
{
    die("Couldn't open template for reading!");
}
$html = fread($template_handle, filesize($template));
fclose($template_handle);

// Set the page's content.
$content = "<h1>This is my page!</h1>\n";
$content .= "<p>Welcome to my page, bla, bla, bla...</p>\n";

// Generate final HTML by inserting page content into template.
$html = str_replace("MY_PAGE_CONTENT", $content, $html);

// Output final HTML to browser.
echo $html;

?>

May have to change the path to the template file, etc, depending where you put your files.

Hope this gets you started.

caminator

Eek...maybe I'm getting in over my head here. I'm not real great with html (only had some minor experiences with it) at this point either.

I have designed some very small and simple websites in the past that only have a few pages to them. I have had to go in and make a million changes to every page anytime I edit it, and I was hoping to keep myself from doing that this time around....but this all seems VERY complicated to me. 🙁