PHP, SHTML, etc

[stlewis]

Ahah. I was doing it with a single page site. So if you want to handle PHP on the home page, you need to have index.htm (or index.html) with JavaScript or one of the other forwarding techniques to take the user straight to index.php, and then you can name any other pages contact_us.php, services.php etc.

Thanks.

[covoxer]

Not at all! Just leave your first page blank and name it "balnk.htm", then name your second page "index.php" and fill it with content. And so on.

[Big Frank]

Not at all! Just leave your first page blank and name it "balnk.htm", then name your second page "index.php" and fill it with content. And so on.

An excellent tip and such a simple solution to an aggravating problem! And something I never thought of whilst struggling with the same problem. Many thanks - it pays to think out of the box

balnk.htm is so difficult to spell, can I change it to blank.htm?

[xtom]

Why doesn't the program just allow renaming the home page to index.php ? It seems strange and inconvenient to me.

[Big Frank]

I agree, doesn't make sense tbh. But the workaround is an acceptable solution to me.

[zaphodeist]

Only thing to watch here is that naming your first page blank.htm (or balnk-htm) means your resources folder is named blank_htm_files ... better to name the first file something meaningfull like site.htm

"Why doesn't the program just allow renaming the home page to index.php ? It seems strange and inconvenient to me." Because the first page has to be *.htm for the preview to work.

[Big Frank]

Because the first page has to be *.htm for the preview to work.

That's not true at all. Create a page, click on preview so that you have the preview window open and then drop a preivously created php page into it. It displays just fine excepting any unparsed php code, which is what you'd expect, and is the same behaviour you get when you drop a php page into FF or IE. But there are other practical reasons why anything other than .htm/l for the default site page is a bad idea. I don't like it because it interferes with my workflow, but I understand their reasons for doing it.

[Big Frank]

Not at all! Just leave your first page blank and name it "balnk.htm", then name your second page "index.php" and fill it with content. And so on.

naming your first page blank.htm (or balnk-htm) means your resources folder is named blank_htm_files ... better to name the first file something meaningfull like "site.htm"

I keep coming back to this combination of posts and it is possibly one of the most valuable usability tips I have found to those of us who use php/ssi.

[covoxer]

Why doesn't the program just allow renaming the home page to index.php ?

This was explained before. John is right, it is a sort of foolproof feature.

[xtom]

It's a foolproof feature that causes confusion