requinix

Not in any way you'll understand. You made a <span>. If you want something else then make something else.

If you want to send something as part of a form submission then it needs to be a form element. A span is not a form element.

What is there to update? Is this XML coming from a user upload and not from some automatic nightly thing?

Cron and a database. Cron to deal with the updated XML and add it to the database, database for the massively better performance and much better searching capabilities compared to reading an XML file. Yeah, okay, it might take a few minutes overnight to deal with the file (something I'm 95% sure can be sped up) but you'll more than make up for the time during the rest of the day when people are hitting the database.

Maybe the image you're writing is bad. Maybe the image is fine and the program doesn't recognize it. Maybe something else.

Your emails are different so you can't merge all three queries together. Or rather you can but there's nothing to gain from it. If you mean sending one email listing multiple people, times three for the three emails, then sure: look into BCC. Currently each query gets you multiple recipients and you loop over it to send each email, what you need is that each query gets you multiple recipients and you loop over it to gather them all together into an array (which you'll use for the BCC), and the difference between those isn't complicated.

Mail doesn't care. Get the data you need. If you have to query multiple tables then do that. Maybe I don't understand what your question is.

Doesn't look like it. But do you need to delete? Once they've been read you don't have to care about them anymore.

Is this an out-of-season April Fool's joke?

It won't be deciding this value ahead of time. You're basically copying and pasting code. Whatever code childprints.php will use, you copy that into the menu. You'll end up with <?php if($_GET["page"] == "childprints" && /* the logic from childprints page */): ?> <li> <a href='flogin.php?page=childprints'>Print</a> <?php endif; ?> I think. Suddenly I'm not sure about the page name anymore.

The source image is a filename contained in the $image variable, right?

See, "when the button is pressed" doesn't tell me how you detect that. "User lands on the childprints page" doesn't either, but I assume it has to do with $_GET["page"]. Maybe another method. Write code usable on the childprints page to detect whether the menu should be shown. Presumably covering the "when the button is pressed" condition. Then combine that code with the code on index.php that currently detects whether to show the childprints page. Then put that whole thing into your menu.

What are the precise conditions required for the print menu to appear?

Okay, but the longer you put it off the harder it will be to fix. Duplicate the logic you already use to determine the page to show. You don't need SERVER_NAME (which is wrong anyways) or REQUEST_URI for this.

That's a problem: you need to alter the menu depending on the page, but you don't determine the page until after the menu has gone out. I would say you should move the page display stuff into the page content stuff. index.php will serve as a "bootstrap", meaning it can include common files (database and such) and determine the page to load, but that's it. The page it includes controls what it displays - it is the one that includes the menu. Which then means, of course, you can do the variable thing.