sorry... let me try again: i want "hello from hawaii" (without quotes) to appear on my page that has the path mywebsite.com/hawaii i want "hello from utah" to appear on my page located at mywebsite.com/utah and i (MAY) want "the weather in idaho" on my index.html at mywebsite.com/idaho from WITHIN the /hawaii file above, it works for me to use php that declares the $place variable as "hawaii" and have code like this in the index.html: <? $place = hawaii; echo "hello from $place"; ?> - BUT this means i need to insert the SAME code, substituting "utah" as the variable $place in the utah file, "canada" as the $place variable in the canada file, etc etc. ** (i actually have a great many more files than just 2 or 3, which is why using includes will be so much easier) ** - i'd like to use an external include, so i can change significant portions of my pages regularly (it's much more work for me to make changes, if everything is HTML on the pages themselves) ** SO... i THINK this is what i need to do... from WITHIN my texas file, i declare the $place variable as texas: <? $place = texas ?> THEN, i want to have an include that would look like: <?php include "http://mywebsite.com/1.php"; ?> - inside include1.php i might have code looking like: <? echo "hello from $place;"> - - BUT this doesn't work, because PHP doesn't know how to find the $place variable (which needs to change, depending on which file is calling the code.) ** i need a "path" telling PHP to pick up the $place variable FROM THE FILE THAT'S CALLING IT) so that: in my utah page, this include prints to screen as "hello from utah", AND "hello from canada" is printed in the canada page, from the very same include -- i need the include to retrieve $place from "mywebsite.com/<LOOK IN THE FILE REQUESTING THIS CODE FOR THE $PLACE VARIABLE"> - in my mywebsite.com/maine html file, i want to use: <?php include "http://mywebsite.com/1.php"; ?> and have the MAINE page read: "hello from maine" - in my mywebsite.com/honolulu html file, i want to use: <?php include "http://mywebsite.com/1.php"; ?> and have the MAINE page read: "hello from honolulu" - am i making this clear? - another example might be 20 pages with the SAME link, only substituting "utah dating" in utah page, "ohio dating" on the ohio page, etc. *** you may have another way of doing this, but with my limited understanding of PHP, this is what i came up with. i can change large sections of page text by using PHP includes, but i'd like to MODIFY those includes so they pick up VARIABLES from the page that calls them... now, it just happens that each DIRECTORY is NAMED the variable that i want to use - the index.html file in mywebsite.com/wyoming has "Wyoming" as $place. i was trying to set the $place variable in the include by using dirname, basename, etc. but i was either getting "hello from public_html" (the main directory that mywebsite.com/maine sits in, or "hello from" and blankspace. *** hope i've explained it this time. (and thankx for your help) :)