PHP help needed, I am a terrible newbie...

[MASTOURA]

Hello all,

I have built a website recently, and all the webpages are built in plain HTML, some with the help of Frontpage, others not.

The structure of the website is pretty simple, as there are a Header, Footer and Menu Bar that appear on ALL webpages. No exceptions.

A friend told me some months ago to build the site in php, since it would be much easier to update it, change the menu bar, etc. I start reading at the time, but got mixed up, and since I had to create the page before September, I went with plain HTML.

As I understand, plain HTML is not bad, it just creates MANY webpages. So many, that now that I need to change something on the menu bar, it is annoying. So I said to myself, maybe it is the time to move on into PHP.

Since I don't have much to start with, I was wondering if you guys can help me out with some working templates with similar look to what I want to do. As I said, the page has a Header and Footer, and a Menu bar on the left, between the Header and the footer. The rest of the page I call it "main window". All info appears on the main window, and all links should change only th main window since the rest is always the same. However, the files/webpages/images that the links point to, are not all in the same directory, so I would think that ABSOLUTE (http://www....) links should work better.

I don't know if you guys understand what I mean, I hope I'm clear enough.

Do you think there's an EASY solution for me?

Thanks for your help.

PS: I know that a "frames" website would be equally easy, but I don't like frames. Besides they have major drawbacks I think, so for me, frames are not an option! ;)

[qball]

Do you think there's an EASY solution for me?

no, unless building the html was "EASY".

php will not make building html any easier, unless you understand:

The structure of the website is pretty simple, as there are a Header, Footer and Menu Bar that appear on ALL webpages. No exceptions.

oops, you do.

PHP will help in this way:

each html page will be built upon common template.
each html page will be built with same "Header, Footer and Menu Bar "
PHP will fill in the rest, if necessary. Or building html was easy.

PHP can take out the redundancy of multiple html files with common html code...

PHP offers interactivity, programmatically.

frames will not make this any harder or easier.

[MASTOURA]

thanks qball for your answer.

I have heard of these php "templates" that are basically (as far as I understand) predifined webpages that are built from multiple sources and filled-in with content by the requested file.

However, I have only seen one example, the infamous "hello world" until now. I remember it was so EASY to change the content of the webpage and keep the rest the same... This is why I was wondering if someone could direct me to some similar templates that would better fit my website...

Do you happen to know of such templates I can 'study' and eventually adapt to my needs?

Thanks again,

M.

[Karifan]

I think that the keyword you use all over the posts is "Header", "Footer" and such.

Correct me if I am wrong, do you use different headers and footers for each page? or is your site uniform in terms of navigation?

I thought with headers and footers all you had to do was modify the header and it displays it on all pages, unless you use a new one for each page, then that is the problem.

Another question is, do you display similar content on most of the pages?
for example specs for different items, like motherboards, video cards and such?
If so, you may want to consider stepping up to asp.
www.brinkster.com is a website to consider for free web hosting using asp technology.

It allows you to create dynamic content within the same pages, i.e one page displays the contents, the second page displays the information pertaining to a single item from the content page.

They have tons of examples for beginner coding.
GL