This is an old video I posted many years ago to my own web site. It is – I believe – the most popular post I have ever created. At last count, the video has over twenty-five thousand hits. I had the step-by-step written tutorial on my site back then and I lost track of how many times it was the most popular thing on my web site each month.
This is a beginner’s tutorial on how to create a valid HTML 5 template that uses PHP includes (“require” actually) that assembles the code on the server. This gives designers the opportunity to build a theme (or “skin”) that can manage the look of an entire web site – large or small.
This type of coding is a stepping-stone exercise in between coding HTML by hand and having a fully dynamic database-driven site, such as WordPress, or a custom content management system (“CMS”).
Enjoy.