Very basic question about htm files becoming php files

[lady1dc]

I thought I was doing well when I took the time to get a couple of books on CSS.  I thought, "oh, I don't even want to know what all that php sql business is."  I'm just barely starting to see, however, that php might make my life a lot easier.  I promise to get a book and to go through all the tutorials to properly learn it.  Meanwhile, however, I'm about to add a major section to my site this weekend and it would be easier if I understood a couple of things.  Please bear with me as I ask the most basic of questions.

 

I plan to use php to put the same navigation menu on all of my pages.  I have found a code in a forum that will allow me to do this.  I have confirmed that my provider allows php.  I understand that the file containing my menu must be saved as a php file rather than htm.  I also understand (correct me if I'm wrong) that all the pages into which the menu will be inserted must also have the php extension.  Essentially this means I will be changing all of my file extensions from htm to php.

 

The question is:  Will I have to re-link all of my pages?  All of my pages, for example, have a link to "home.htm"  Would I need to go through and change them all to link to "home.php"?  Or, when the php parsing does its thing, does it take care of this for me -- reading all php files as htm?  (For some reason I do not remember, I chose to make all my files htm instead of html extensions.)

 

Thanks and I'm sorry for such a silly little question.

[p2grace]

I think the safest way would be to update all your links to .php extensions.

[Nhoj]

If you are on a VPS or a dedicated server you could have the PHP engine parse .htm files also.

[revraz]

Change your .htaccess to parse .htm and .html as PHP.