Making a site WITHOUT frames - php

Question

I want to make my homepage, without frames, should i just split up my design on index.php so it is header.php/footer.php, and then just include them on every page?

Answer 1

Yes, you can split your index.php into header.php/footer.php and then just include them on every page.
Note that your pages can be not static HTML but php scripts, to show multiple pages with one script.
I'd suggest also to have not a commonplace structure like
include 'header.php';
//do some stuff
include 'footer.php';
but another structure, much more useful:
//do some stuff, retrieve all data.
include 'header.php';
include 'page.php'; //include page template
include 'footer.php';

Answer 2

I suggest you use a framework. Most frameworks (if not all) have simple template systems, so you don't have to repeat code.

Answer 3

The problem with the suggested solution of including stuff in every page of your site is that you have to update all the pages of your site if you want to include another thing, say a sidebar.
A better idea is not to have a script--page connection at all. So you don't write a php file per page you want to show. Instead, use one front controller file, most use index.php in the root of the website. And then use Apache mod_rewrite or other server techniques to have flexibility in the URL's of your site. Then let index.php map different URL requests to serve different pages, you can then put all the pages of your site into a database or somewhere else.
This way there's only one point in your site that includes the templates for the header and footer, so that's easily changeable, and you can use the root of the site to serve AJAX requests, in which you won't want to output HTML but JSON for instance.
Afaik this is a good way of going about it.

Answer 4

Another idea would be to have just one single point of entry which is called with a GET parameter, e.g ?site=about. Your index.php could look like this:
<?php
// whitelist of allowed includes
$allowedIncludes = array('home', 'about', 'error404'); // etc.
// what to include if ?site is not set at all / set to an illegal include
$defaultInclude = 'home';
$errorInclude = 'error404';
// if site is not set, include default
$site = (empty($_GET['site'])) ? $defaultInclude : $_GET['site'];
// if site is illegal, include error page
$include = (in_array($site, $allowedIncludes)) ? $site : $errorInclude;
// actual includes
include 'header.php';
include $include.'.php';
include 'footer.php';
Thus you only have to include header.php and footer.php once and have full control about what is allowed and what is not (the included files could be in a directory that only php has access to). While your index.php handles the request, home.php, about.php do not have to know about header.php and footer.php (you could easily replace them at a later point in time).
If you do not like http://www.example.com/?site=about, you can look into mod_rewrite and friends.

Answer 5

You may want to set a session for that. A session variable exists as long as a visitor is on your website:
<?php
session_start(); // Remember that session_start(); must be the first line of your PHP and HTML-code
if($add_a_message){
$_SESSION['message'] = 'Message';
}
if($destroy_message){
$_SESSION['message'] = '';
}
// echo this message
if(isset($_SESSION['message']) && strlen($_SESSION['message']) > 0){
echo '<strong>' . $_SESSION['message'] . '</strong>';
}
?>