PHP visibility on local- syntax issue

Question

I am changing my WYSIWYG from GoLive to Dreamweaver.
Imported my site, that has some header and menu includes in
php. The pages open with only the header include showing and
nothing on the page beyond (I just see the header inlcude on the
page, not the page design I'm working on) when I use
<?php include ('header_incl.htm'); ?>
When I change the code to
<? php include ('header_incl.htm'); ?>
I can see the design/layout of the page (with just a PHP
shield graphic for the includes), but I get a browser error on the
live site.
Is there a setting in Dreamweaver to be able to view the
page, with the syntax I'm using, on my local machine? If not, I'm
going to sacrifice my WYSIWYG cababilities, and I'm a designer, not
a programmer...
Thanks.

Answer 1

jcamrud wrote:
> The include file validates out fine. As does the main
file.
You have a basic misunderstanding of how include files work.
The fact
that the two files validate independently is totally
irrelevant. Once an
external file is included, the *combined* code must validate.
> I did a basic test. Created a page with just an include
and a sentence. Same
> thing. Doesn't show me the sentence in Dreamweaver on my
local, but shows it
> on the live site.
Yes, that's browsers being tolerant of crap code. Dreamweaver
is not a
browser. It's designed to create standards-compliant code.
> However, I do get a yellow box on the local version of
the page that says
> </head>, above the include.
Yes, that's exactly what I expected would happen. The yellow
box is
Dreamweaver's way of telling you that you have incorrectly
nested tags.
A web page can have only one html tag, one head tag, and one
body tag.
When you use an include file, the *combination* of the two
must create a
single valid HTML document.
> If I take out the single quote marks within the inlcude
> <?php inlcude(header.htm); ?> it shows me the page
with the php-shield-graphic
> placeholder, but it doesn't recognize the include on the
live version.
Stop playing around with the PHP code. What you're creating
is
syntactical nonsense.
The problem that you have encountered is probably the most
common cause
of mistakes with include files. Strip the html, head, and
body tags out
of your include file, and everything should fit together just
fine and
dandy.
David Powers, Adobe Community Expert
Author, "Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8" (friends of ED)
Author, "PHP Solutions" (friends of ED)
http://foundationphp.com/