Okay, you can't just take the code that someone posts, cut and and paste, and expect it to work like magic and fix all of your problems. You might just have to put a little thought into this one.
Okay. You have a file called articles.php located in a certain directory. In that directory there is another directory called articles. within that articles directory is stored the text of each of your articles. 001.html is one article page, complete with <body>, etc tags. 002.html, 126.html, etc...
So, back to articles.php. It should contain the following:
<?
$page = "articles/$article.html";
include($page);
?>
You call the page like this:
www.yourdomain.com/articles.php?article=001
www.yourdomain.com/articles.php?article=126
etc...
This will work if your include_path is set to "", otherwise you may have to use absolute paths ("/usr/home/you/www/articles/$article.html" or something like that)
THIS IS AN EXAMPLE. It's by no means the best or the only way to do it. It might be too much of a pain in the ass to do, but it's one simple method.
Adapt to your needs, as always...
---John Holmes...