After recently venturing into web development, I decided to create a guestbook that requires login information. Users with valid accounts have the ability to log in/out, create new entries, and edit their own content. They also have the option to change their password and make new user profiles.
The overall structure of the site (header, footer, navigation, div's, etc.) remains consistent, while the content is dynamic and changes based on various actions such as displaying existing articles, creating new articles, or adding new users.
I'm facing a challenge: How can I efficiently reuse HTML code?
- One approach is to include the header and footer as PHP includes on every page and use echo to print out the results. However, this method presents challenges when it comes to incorporating jQuery since it is client-side, and mixing it with PHP output can be messy.
- Another option is to have each page contain the complete HTML structure and make jQuery-Ajax calls. The downside to this method is that any design changes require modifications to every file, and a new PHP file must be created for each request.
Are there alternative methods that I might not be aware of?