- Setting Up the Project 3:31
- Using PHP Code on Our Site 3:09
- A Simple PHP Example 1 objective
- Including the Header 5:32
- Including the Footer and Adding Additional Pages 3:19
- Basic PHP and Including Files 5 questions
- Using Variables for the Title Tag 3:24
- Working with _GET Variables 5:10
- Variables and Conditionals 6 questions
- Adding Active States to the Navigation 4:29
- Variables and Conditionals 3 objectives
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Using Variables for the Title Tag
3:24Variables allow you to customize the HTML that PHP produces and dynamically modify it for each page. In this video, we’ll use a variable to give each page a unique value for its title tag.
As we covered in the php basics course,
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a variable is a piece of code
that references some data.
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There are several types of variables.
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Throughout this course,
we'll be using strings, integers,
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meaning whole numbers, arrays,
and touch briefly on objects.
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The first one we'll be
using is a string variable.
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To change the title tag from page to page.
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Let's go back into the suggest.php file.
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Let's start by specifying the page
title for the suggest page.
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Right before this line where we include
the header, let's add a variable or
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page title.
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As a refresher, variables in PHP
are represented by a dollar sign
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followed by the name of the variable.
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Variable names are case sensitive.
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We can make up just about any
name we want for our variable.
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A valid variable name
starts with a letter or
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an underscore, followed by any number
of letters, numbers, or underscores.
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There's no predefined list of
variables we have to choose from.
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But it's good practice to make
your names descriptive so
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that your code is easier to read.
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Let's assign our variable page title,
a string value of suggest a media item.
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If we assign this value to the variable
in our code before we include header.php,
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then we can reference this
variable in that include file.
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Open header.php.
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Here we have the page title,
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where we've told it to simply
echo out the actual title.
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This is not very useful.
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Let's replace the string Personal Media
Library, with our variable, page title.
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Be sure to type the variable name exactly.
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Again, upper and
lowercase characters do matter.
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Save both files, and let's take
a look at suggest in our browser.
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When we refresh the page, notice how
the title on the tab has changed.
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Let's take a closer look at
what's happening in our code.
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When suggest.php first loads, our code
creates a variable named $pageTitle and
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assigns it a value of
"Suggest a Media Item".
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Then our code includes header.php.
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Which echos out the value in
that page title variable.
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Let's add the same variable with
different values to our other pages.
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Open catalog.php.
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And let's add this variable
right before I include
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page title equals Full catalog.
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Now lets go into index.php and
do the same thing.
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A new variable, page, title.
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And we'll assign this the value
of Personal Media Library.
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Now let's go back to our browser.
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As we click through the menu,
we can see our title changing as we go.
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By assigning a value to a variable
before the header file gets included,
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we can use the same PHP code for
all the pages but
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still give them unique values for
their title tags.
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