@Alex :lol:
First off there are never any stupid questions, just stupid answers, so do not worry, ask away.
At the end of the day if its something you don't understand its something millions of others also don't know so you are never alone, even if you think its stupid and other people are thinking jease, trust me they really are not.
I once asked what an A tag does and how you link two pages together when someone clicks some text, I learnt how to by that question.
Right, lets give you a proper working example of a custom PHP template which with a small learning curve and maybe a few questions, you can pick up and take to other projects. If you need any more clarification fire away with what you need and could do with understanding the process better. But in the end this will get you into a far better approach to coding websites and maintaining them in the future.
The aim of below is to give you a working understanding of your own template system where all your separate areas are separated. That way you only need to change the actual "page" content by opening the file for that page, everything else is in its own files, titles in this case but you can get really creative.
So with have our main logic:
Index.php
<?php
define("PAGE","home"); // Change home to a new name if you create a new page,
require_once"inc/header.php";//All our header html and logic is in here
?>
<div id="main-body-content">
Main Home page content goes in here
</div>
<?php require_once"inc/footer.php";//Footer content in here
?>
header.php (Located in a directory called inc off your root/main directory, normally public_html)
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html lang="en" dir="ltr">
<head>
<?php require_once"inc/title.php";?>
<link href="css/main.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" screen="print" />
<!--[if IE]><link href="css/allIEStyles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" screen="print" /><![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8]><link href="css/ie8styles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" screen="print" /><![endif]-->
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrap">
<div id="head">
Header goes in here
</div>
Footer.php (Located in a directory called inc off your root/main directory, normally public_html)
<div id="foot">
Footer goes in here
</div>
</div>
<?php //End of wrap tag?>
</body>
</html>
Title.php (Located in a directory called inc off your root/main directory, normally public_html)
<?php
if(isset(PAGE)){
/*Test to see if the page to our new template system has a page name, if it has test it to see which page we are on and then which title and metas to output.
*/
switch(PAGE){
case "home":
?>
<title>Home page</title>
<meta name="description" content="Home page meta description" />
<?php
break;
case "about":
?>
<title>About us page</title>
<meta name="description" content="about us meta description" />
<?php
break;
case "contact":
?>
<title>Contact us page</title>
<meta name="description" content="Contact us meta description" />
<?php
}
}
?>
Lets say our header is out to the left by 5px in Chrome and Safari, 10px in Opera, 20px in Firefox, 5px in Ie9, 30px in Ie8. So to correct it x-browser we would write the following into the style sheets.
style.css
body{font-family:80% Tahoma}
#wrap{width:990px;margin:0 auto}
#head{margin-left:-10px} /*Sorts it in Opera*/
#head,x:-webkit-any-link{margin-left:-5px} /*Sorts it in Chrome and Safari*/
#head,x:-moz-any-link{margin-left:-20px}/*Sorts it out in Firefox*/
allIEStyles.css (Located in a directory called css off your root/main directory, normally public_html)
#head{margin-left:-5px}
ie8styles.css (Located in a directory called css off your root/main directory, normally public_html)
#head{margin-left:-30px}
Then the about us page would be simply:
about-us.php
<?php
define("PAGE","about"); // Change home to a new name if you create a new page,
require_once"inc/header.php";//All our header html and logic is in here
?>
<div id="main-body-content">
About us page content goes in here
</div>
<?php require_once"inc/footer.php";//Footer content in here
?>
Then any other pages would be the same, change the PAGE defined variable and add a new case to the switch in the title.php file to give it a custom title element, and meta if you think it needs it.
If you do get any PHP errors, when you get your PHP environment working, let me know as I just wrote that off the cuff.
It may look dauting, but its really easy to get your head around and when you do makes your life so much easier, sheds time of development and adds years to your life.
If you get stuck, or any one else give us a shout.
Any other different questions just start a new thread and I'm sure someone on here will stop by and let you know the answer/help you resolve it.
If its a code problem be specific with code examples, not the entire lot though, just where you think the problem is.
