Dynamic content areas?

[Andy82]

Hey,

I have been learning PHP for the last couple of weeks and have made a few simple pages.

I would now like to make a simple CMS and am having problems understanding how to make a content area that contain dynamic content.

Could someone please explain how I should be structuring it? Should I be using a ‘switch’ or an ‘if – else’ in a content file and including that?

e.g

I have….

<?php

include “header.php”;

//in here I want the content…

include “footer.php”;

?>

Also if I wanted…

<div>
<div>$the_title</div>
<div>$content</div>
</div>

Would I have to include all the DIV’s in my included files? Or can I somehow get the content and the DIV template and merge them together?

Sorry if this is a really basic question…but I really need some help.

Thank you

[Protato]

You can run it through a database, or the switch or elseif branch. Basically you want to read what page is being requested, the include that.

$page = $_GET['page'];

switch($page){
   case "ContactUs":
      $content_include = 'contact/contact_us.php';
      break;
   default:
      $content_include = 'main.php';
      break;
}

include($content_include);

include($footer_include);

A generic template system (meaning it pretty much only seperates buisness/presentation logic) could be accomplished by another set of includes.

$include = 'html_view.php';

//assign the vars you want in the template.
$first_name = "Bob";
//include the template
include($include)

Index (decide content to load) -> content processor (processes requests) -> content display (template to displaying data from processor)

[Kudose]

The easiest way is to store the document name and content in the database using a single page to query the database and return the page content.