I usually use file_get_contents() in between fopen() and fclose() statements. Is this necessary? or am I actually opening the file twice by doing so?
You're opening the file twice by doing that.
to get the whole file text in one string, just do this..
<?php $file = "some_File.txt"; $text = file_get_contents($file); // Then you can echo $text; or whatever you need to do ?>