What is a good way to set up a site template with PHP on IIS6?

Question

I am not very experienced with PHP. I have a site I'm maintaining that is on IIS6 using PHP. Right now it is using include files and querystrings to server up content.

For example: http://mysite/index.php?maincontent=services&subcontent=service1&nav=subnav1

We want to change the site so that URLs look more like (for example): http://mysite/commercial-services.php

But, I don't want to duplicate code and include files in the 30+ files of the web site.

Is there an easy way with php to have a template that keeps the short urls but allows you to use the same layout file for multiple pages?

I do mostly .net web sites so I guess what I'm looking for is something comparable to asp.net master pages.

I also looked at php frameworks, namely codeigniter. However, that by default leaves an index.php in the middle of the url. From what I read we would need to use some type of isapi rewrite to get rid of that. I can't do that because I don't have access to the server and they don't want to install things on the server.

Is there anything simple we can use or are we limited to using includes?

Update: For this I ended up converting the site to .net. It was much faster and easier (for me) to do than figure out how to set up something with PHP.

Answer 1

I'd say look at rewrites not frameworks if all you want to do is change the urls, that way you backend php can stay the same but you still get the nice urls.

There's loads of tutorials, quick google gave me:

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/guide-url-rewriting