Question

<?php echo isset($areas['footer']) ? $areas['footer'] : null; ?>

Any way to improve that?

Answer 1

Note that you are echoing and in false condition it would be null which does not have any effect. You could say like 'empty' or ' ' or 'not found' instead. Other alternative is to get the return value of isset:

$return = isset($areas['footer']) ? $areas['footer'] : null;

if ($return)
{
  // $return contains footer info
}
else
{
  // footer was not set :(
}