Includes and Arrays for Gallery Thumbs

[ATS16805]

hi.
i'm trying to make my life easier by modifying the layout of a static page. really, the whole site is static, and i'm slowly putting in some "dynamic" stuff, like includes for the navigation so i can be a little more easily creative w/ the CSS, etc.

i've come to this gallery where it's time now to add a new page. what i've decided to do is remove the "Page 1, Page 2, Page 3" horizontal nav out and send the same code back as an include.

i decided to make the list of <dl>'s which hold the thumbnails an include as well, so i'll end up w/ a gallery "shell" essentially, into which a set of thumbnails will be pulled, depending upon which horzontal navigatoin the user selects.

it was at this point that i thought: why have all of these hard coded thumbnail images in there? just the very amount of html vs what it's actually producing MUST mean that i could clean that up a bit, right ? (kidding... i know not always the case... but often...)

not being a very experienced programmer, i'm trying to think of how this should be done so that i will have the greatest modular scalability in the end. i sketched my idea out in MacroMedia FReeHand -- a habit i've been trying to get into rather than try to sit here and do the code as i go along, and not put anything on paper, etc. i've found that the sketching really does help! regardless, i've still got myself confused over this particular "fantasy" page. i have no idea if what i'm trying to do is going to work-- so that's why i've come here-- for your advice-- perhaps you might recogize a fatal error, or maybe you'll see something in there-- a small tweak which might really help me to grow w/ it even more.

please view my FreeHand HTML export-- my sketch.
it's not the most high-quality looking thing to view, but it's just a sketch...
the gallery is here: as you can see, it is indeed ready for a new page, and also, indeed -- tedious.

thanks! i look forward to any advice, completely different ideas anyone might have-- whatever i might receive. thanks for you patience w/ the the poor quality of the sketch. the idea is that it's supposed to represent my "new" thumbnails (i suppose...)

[ATS16805]

you can view the existing thumbnail gallery html -- i'm hoping you'll compare w/ where i'm trying to go w/ it, and advise for or against, or... maybe something else entirely.

here's what i came up w/ for how the definition lists HTML might change in order to accomodate the PHP-- however, i've just realized my first stumbling block --

i'm probably putting the cart before the horse here, but this would sort of complete my sketch-- notice how i've got the arrays working through the HTML going down the page-- my question is this: how am i going to get those array iterations to work properly (a BIG question, i realize)...

and by the way-- anyone who knows me here, knows i'm not looking for someone to just give me code-- i'm here because i want to learn. so, hints here and there are appreciated, but some stuff i'm still blown away on-- hence my appearance here today.

thanks again!

 <?php include('inc/gallerynavigation.php'); ?>
<dl>
	<dt>
	<span class="strem2"><?php $title[$text]; ?></span>  /* just text descrptions of the thumb. not in the correponding 'sketch' */
	<br /><?php $desc[$text]; ?>
	</dt>
		<dd><?php $thumb[$img]; ?> /*  $page1[$row] ... in the sketch thing -- it's important here, i think, that $row is a dynamically increasing number w/ each new thumbnail, right? (hence row1, row2, etc in the sketch) */
		</dd>

    <dt>
<span class="strem2"><?php $title[$text]; ?></span>
<br /><?php $desc[$text]; ?>
</dt>
	<dd><?php $thumb[$img]; ?>
	</dd>

<dt>
<span class="strem2"><?php $title[$text]; ?></span>
<br /><?php $desc[$text]; ?>
</dt>
	<dd><?php $thumb[$img]; ?>
	</dd>