RE: [PHP] why doesn't this work ?

> Why cannot I embed php in html files? I'm relatively new to PHP, but I am fairly sure that it is possible to have PHP embedded in .html files, as my web hosting service accomplishes exactly that. I believe it's just some kind of setting in Apache or somewhere else that you or your web hosting service can configure. On my web hosting service, the file can have a .html extension, but there must be <?php ?> tags at the very beginning of the file, on the very first line before absolutely any HTML code, including doctype headings. If you want your PHP to work it's magic somewhere else in the page, and not at the very beginning, it's no problem, just put some harmless bit of code at the beginning, and then place whatever it is that you really want to do within separate <?php ?> tags where you want it. Personally, because I work with software that generates templates for all my web pages, I put the following code at the start of every page: <?php session_start(); ?> I chose session_start as a command because I often need sessions, and if there is a session, it needs to happen before the HTML <head> tag anyway. If one of the pages based on my template doesn't have a session, or even if it doesn't use any PHP at all, then the HTML parser seems to just ignore the <?php ?> tags and whatever is in it and output the .html file no problem. Bottom line - speak to your web hosting service about configuring .html files to be parsed by the PHP engine. If you're running your own server, then you'll need to consult someone more advanced than I. Also, I can't ensure there aren't any errors or drawbacks to my advice, I'm just relaying how my web hosting service seems to handle the issue. Hope that helps. -- Yoroshiku! Dave G ml@autotelic.com