Websites are constantly changing. New layouts, sponsors, and graphics are continually being applied to existing sites. Knowing this, it only makes sense to minimize the maintenance work that you will have to do in the future.
Below is the template I've used for other sites with good success and that I'm going to use
for each page in the RemindMe site.
<?
require($DOCUMENT_ROOT . "/phplib/prepend.php");
?>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>RemindMe Service</title>
<?
require($DOCUMENT_ROOT . "/include/doc_top.php");
require($DOCUMENT_ROOT . "/include/doc_menu.php");
require($DOCUMENT_ROOT . "/include/doc_footer.php");
?>
First, we include the necessary prepend.php file. Next, we begin our HTML document, specifying the necessary tags up to the <title> tags.
Next, I include a new file, doc_top.php. This file contains any style sheet definitions, the <body> tag, and any graphics/text that appear at the top of every page.
The doc_menu.php file is used to display a menu at the left side and/or along the top of the document. For this application the doc_menu.php file is blank, as I am not creating a site-wide menu.
The page-specific content is then placed on the php page.
Finally, the doc_footer.php file is included. Any copyright/privacy notices that appear at the bottom of the page are included in this file, along with the closing </body> and </html> tags.