Dynamic PHP web pages question

[hhisc383]

Hello! I hope you guys can help. I'm new to PHP...so I apologize ahead of time

on the index, I have the header, menu to the left, page content section to the right, and the footer. i just want the page content section of the page to change with this:

<?php
if ($_GET['go']=='aboutus') {
include 'aboutus.php';
}
?>

How can I do that? I tried to do it, but it would just put the page it was fetching above what was already in the content section of the index page. how can i make that content part change each time there is a new request?

[Jessica]

if ($_GET['go']=='aboutus') {
include 'aboutus.php';
}else{
include 'indexContent.php';
}

Don't put your index content unless you know there isn't another include, or else, kinda duh, it will show up...

[taith]

assuming your are variable based, it wouldnt matter where you include() it...
if their not... you need to include() it exactly where you want the file to show.

[marcus]

What Jesirose said would work. But to make it much easier if you had more than one page and instead of including each page separately you could do something like:

[code=php:0]
$page = $_GET['go'];

if(isset($page)){
  if(file_exists("$page.php")){
  include("$page.php");
  }else {
  header("Location: index.php");
  }
}else {
include("indexContent.php");
}
[/code]

Each file name would be $page.php, say $page was contact, it would include contact.php, etc...

[marcus]

[quote author=taith link=topic=122835.msg507068#msg507068 date=1169057091]
assuming your are variable based, it wouldnt matter where you include() it...
if their not... you need to include() it exactly where you want the file to show.
[/quote]

What you're saying is

[code=php:0]
<?php
//have you top part here
//put your include filename here for content
//put your footer here
?>
[/code]

[hhisc383]

thanks for all the quick replies. i'm going to sort through this...like i said, i'm totally new to php, so it all looks a little confusing.