In effect what your using kansuke is a template. Thats what how I do my webpages at the moment. The only improvements that I think you can make are include the full HTML in your layout.php. That way you can contorl everything such as headings, javascripts includes, CSS. now when you need to make changes to the site you just edit the layout.php template and it will affect your whole website.
when you use it you can create a page (example.php) and pass it variable specific to that page.
So first thing you would do is create a plain HTML layout you like and set where you content and items will be. Then identifiy what changes and make place holders in your template for it. Then when you are happy with it you turn it into a PHP file being the templat you will use for all your pages.
Now when you need a page or extra one you just create one and pass it the variables appropriate to it. Heres an example of my index.php page
<?php
/*
Core template
==============
$title
include('menu_list.php');
$content
*/
$title = $title." - Si Web Portfolio";
echo"
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN\" \"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd\">
<html xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\">
<head>
<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\" />
<title>$title</title>
<script type='text/javascript' src='js/si.js'></script>
<link rel=\"stylesheet\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"main.css\" />
</head>
<body>
<!-- Begin Wrapper -->
<div id=\"wrapper\">
<!-- Begin Header -->
<div id=\"header\">
<div id=\"header_leftside\"></div>
<div id=\"header_rightside\"></div>
<div id=\"header_center\">
<div id=\"header_logo\"></div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- End Header -->
<!-- Begin sub_heading -->
<div class=\"container\">
<div id=\"sh_center\">
<div id=\"sh_block\">
<img src=\"images/si_15.png\" alt=\"\" />
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"sh_left\"></div>
<div id=\"sh_right\"></div>
</div>
<!-- End sub_heading -->
<!-- MAIN CONTENT -->
<div id=\"content_container\">
<div id=\"leftsidebar\" class=\"leftbar\">
<div id=\"left_nav_container\">
<ul class=\"navigation\">";
// include menu list
include('menu_list.php');
echo" </ul>
</div>
<div id=\"left_nav_footer\"></div>
</div>
<div id=\"maincontent\" class=\"centerbar\">
<div id=\"center_content\">";
// include Content
if($content != "")
include($content);
else
{ // default notice
echo"<h1>No content</h1>";
echo"<p>";
echo"There has been no content added in this section yet. Please return back later at a later date. Thank You!";
echo"</p>";
}
echo"
</div>
<div id=\"si_closing\"><img src=\"images/si_closing.png\" alt=\"\" /></div>
</div>
<div id=\"rightsidebar\" class=\"rightbar\">
</div>
</div>
<!-- MAIN CONTENT END -->
<!-- Begin Footer -->
<div id=\"footer_container\">
<div class=\"footer_centerbar\">
</div>
<div class=\"footer_leftbar\">
</div>
<div class=\"footer_rightbar\">
</div>
</div>
<div id=\"footer_notice\">
<a href=\"http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=referer\"><img
src=\"http://www.w3.org/Icons/valid-xhtml10-blue\"
alt=\"Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict\" height=\"31\" width=\"88\" /></a>
</div>
<!-- End Footer -->
</div>
<!-- End Wrapper -->
</body>
</html>
";
?>
Hope this gives you some ideas on how to do things. Theres always more then one ways to do something but what ever is easier for you and works should be good enough. This is the method I have just picked up while doing websites. I used to copy and paste the whole layout to each page not too long ago lol.
