Pure-Essence.Net

new theme us

November 11th, 2003

the new theme “us” is released. if you don’t yet see it, click here. what took the longest was the css writing (yes this layout is made with tableless css) and the navigation coding. i coded all the navigations now with php arrays. that way i will only need to change one file when i update the navigations for the four sections index and the left menus. i will briefly talk about my php code.

each section has an array file that contains php code like:

$section_name = “Domain”;
$section_link[] = “/domain/intro.php”;
$section_link_name[] = “intro”;
$section_link_desc[] = “tells you why, when did I start pure-essence.net and other related information.”;

$section_link[] = “/domain/themes.php”;
$section_link_name[] = “themes”;
$section_link_desc[] = “find out what are the themes for this domain and how to change them.”;
…

When I make the actual index file i.e. /domain/index.php, I just put

<?
include_once(”/home/pure/www/index/domain_index.php”);
?>
<div class=”rings”><?=$section_name?></div>
<div class=”just”>
<?
for($i = 0; $i < count($section_link); $i++) {
echo “· <a href=”$section_link[$i]“>$section_link_name[$i]</a> - $section_link_desc[$i]<br /><br />\n”;
}
?>
</div>

If I ever need the index to be listed in a different way due to theme change, I can do something like:

<?
include_once(”/home/pure/www/index/domain_index.php”);
for($i = 0; $i < count($section_link); $i++) {
$section_link_desc[$i] = strip_tags($section_link_desc[$i]);
echo “<a href=”$section_link[$i]” title=”$section_link_desc[$i]“>$section_link_name[$i]</a> \n”;
}
?>

This is used for my left side menu for each section. Of course the left side menu can not be done without path testing. Thus stuff like:

if(strstr($_SERVER[PATH_TRANSLATED], “public_html/domain”)) {
$this_section = “domain”;
} elseif(strstr($_SERVER[PATH_TRANSLATED], “public_html/mistress”)) {
$this_section = “mistress”;
}…

are very helpful

Don’t worry if you don’t understand my code. I just feel geeky so I explained it a little bit to those who are interested in coding. Cheer for php arrays!