hehe
depends what u want
with ssi, u'd have ur header and footer code in seperate pages-
header.inc:
<html><head>...<design code here><table cell here>
then u'd use (i forget the proper code) <ssi include="header.inc">
<page content>
<ssi include="footer.inc">
footer.inc would be like:
</close table></body></html> and all that...
and each separate content page would be .shtml and contain the header and footer "includes"
whereas in php... (probably not working code, havent got time for that)
there are a few ways, databasing - which i can't really show here, or static files, same as above SSI but nicer to work with, since php can actually write to static files, or databases so you can update ur site from part of ur design
<html>
<head><title>
<?php include("title$page.inc"); ?>
</title></head>
<page design here>
<table cell start>
<?php
include("content$page.inc");
?>
</table>
<? include ("copyright.inc"); ?>
</body></html> etc etc
there are plenty of ways to do it, but in that example u could edit the design page still using a web editor and save it, upload it etc making it easier to make minor or major design changes (use CSS for all ur text formatting too, this way u can change fonts, colors etc without needing to edit all your content pages)
this way, tho, all ur links are basically done as:
(for this example we'll say you have a page for photos, which u number 17 -- if you use words people could enter ../../../etc/passwd etc and get system configurations, if u use numbers, u can do some code to check at the top of ur page if $page == a number, and if not to display the index page, or an error page)
so content17.inc contains the data to go on that sub-page
title17.inc contains say... "Photos 2003-2004"
copyright.inc contains say "this page © copyright 2004 kentor designs"
ur link to photos would be <?php echo "<a href=\"$PHP_SELF?page=17\">Photos</a>" ?>
obviously it's a little more complicated and there are other error checks you need to run to make sure no-one is trying to jump around ur design, and my code is probably a little messy, i ahvent programmed much since about october last year... hope this helps; download the manual from php.net and use this as it has many code examples for every, or nearly every command within php.