Date: 01/17/06 (PHP Community)    Keywords: php, css, html, database, web

I have a website, just a little personal project where I archive my writing. Over the years I have streamlined the code of this page as my knowledge of web design grows, so that it has gone from ugly frames to a smooth CSS-based design. However, this site has many identical pages (as far as layout is concerned, not content), and every time I significantly update the site layout, I always end up having to update each and every page manually. This is a pain.

So here is what I would like to do about this:

1) Create a database of some sort, or maybe just a collection of .txt files, and when a user clicks on a link (say, to one of my poems), have PHP generate the page based on information parsed in the link. I have no idea if this is even possible.

or

2) Create one file containing all of the layout's HTML information, and have each page access it instead of having to hardcode such into each file. This file could also contain the CSS information if possible.

The trick to all this is that while I am a master of HTML/CSS design, I know next to nothing about PHP, beyond how to write the simplest of scripts and how to upload it to my domain. Is what I'm proposing even feasible, and if so, does anyone have any suggestions/advice/code/places to go for more information to help me make it work?

Thanks so much if you can help me, and apologies for being such a newbie pain!

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/php/395976.html