Calling php to a specific part of a page

[jarrod1218]

This is probably a simple answer, but it's driving me nuts and I can't figure it out for the life of me.

I am re-doing my company's website in php. I have a header, footer, navigation, and news pane that are called with the require function. The center cell is the only data that changes from page to page. Until now, I have copied and pasted the entire code from one page to another.

My question is how can I make it so I can have the code all on one page (index.php), and just call the new data each time the user selects a different page? I have seen pages that end in "index.php?content=products" (or something similar) and I think that would just be easier to manage.

Any thoughts? Or did I just confuse everyone with my babble??
=)

[revdev]

One way of doing this is you would have one main page (i.e. index.php).

Here, you would have all the code that stays the same from page to page (header, footer, etc.).

Then, in the 'content' area that changes, have something like the following:

switch ($_GET['content'])
{
  case "news":
    require('news.php');
    break;
  case "contact":
    require('contact.php');
    break;
  case "home":
    require('home.php');
    break;
  default:
    require('home.php');
    break;
}

In all of these files (news.php, etc.) have the content that change for each page.

The $GET variable is from the URL. When you see index.php?content=news, you can access the content variable with $GET['content']. So you would set up links to index.php?content=news, index.php?content=contact etc.

Be aware that doing what you want to do is typically not an optimal solution, especially in regards to SEO. I have always found it easier and less complicated to simply do what you do now. Have header and footer includes, and use them on every page. Doing it the above way can get confusing, especially as the number of pages on your site gets bigger.

[revdev]

I should add:

If you do something like this, make sure you do NOT do the following:

index.php?filename=news.php

require($_GET['filename']);

If allow_url_fopen is on in your php.ini, it will allow bad people to remotely execute php code on your server. This is not good.

[jarrod1218]

Thanks!

I tried the code you gave me, and it worked, but you are right, it is a lot of work for a very minimal change. I think I'll just leave it the way I had before and call it good.