Question

Currently developing a website and am wondering how to include pages into the main index (to only change a certain areas content and not the whole page) using the $_Get function.

Files would be something like index.php (where content pages are included), news.php (default page display on index), members.php, about.php, guides.php, downloads.php, sponsors.php etc.

I believe (if i remember correctly) linking with the $_Get method usually looks something like this index.php?pid=about

I would also like to find out how I can change the link (via htaccess?) to link as follows: http://www.mywebsite.com/about/ instead of mywebsite.com/index.php?pid=about

It has been some time since I have done any PHP and do not remember how the above things are done exactly.

Preview of what I am working on can be found at http://www.survivaloperations.net/dev/

Answer 1

You would put all of your files in a pages folder, just reugular .php files.

your index.php would look like this:

include('pages/'. $_GET['pid']. '.php');

And so your files would look like:

pages/home.php
pages/contact.php

and you would go to:

index.php?pid=home
index.php?pid=contact

respectively

You would also want to have control over which $_GET values are allowed. I reccomend using a php switch:

 switch($_GET['pid']) {
      case "home": include("home.php"); break;
      case "contact": include("contact.php"); break;
      case "thing": include("thing.php"); break;
      default: include("404.php"); break;
 }

The switch requires less code than a bunch of else if statements, and allows for a default “404”-type page to be displayed when an invalid pid is entered. It also secures users from accessing anything they shouldn’t… like “../db.php” or something (not sure if parent directory access is possible, but still).