Topic awaiting preservation: PHP making me pull out hair!!

Ok ok ok.... I've been fiddling with this all morning and I've never encountered this problem before EVER!


I've got my clients site up and it was running (for lack of better term) flawless. In fact, let me break down the sites layout. Now it is a tabled layout for now so dont hate me, I'm trying to redesign it using only CSS... but here goes.

My site is broken down into 5 parts. (header, left column, main body, right column, and footer) The header is a flash file so sitewide changes are made easily. The rest are external php files. I know for a fact that the usage of these damn tables is whats screwing this up but I need to figure out a way to work with it for now. (unless someone would graciously like to help me!!) (*hint*)

My columns are working fine, my main content works fine but my footer is going wacky on me. I've redone the footer.php file to include just the footer menu and links. In fact it looks like this.

<a href="index.php">Home</a> |
<a href="directions.php">Directions</a> |
<a href="hotels.php">Hotels</a> |
<a href="careers.php">Careers</a> |
<a href="aboutus.php">About Us</a><br />
<a href="articles.php">Articles</a> |
<a href="problemgambling.php">Responsible Gaming</a> |
<a href="contactus.php">Contact Us</a>

Notice I removed all styles, etc. so it should show very plain and boring. Now when I view the page (www.playhpc.com/footer.php) I get all kinds of what looks like residual code that used to be there only it's all messed up. I have no clue whats going on here. From time to time I would experience pages that would show repeated sections, such as http://www.playhpc.com/podcast.php

Now I'm about to just call it a day and go home but because it's part of my job to get this stupid thing working, I'm stuck and forced to pull out hair.

Any help would be majorly appreciated. :-D



btw, would my site permissions have anything to do with the quirkyness? They seem to change every so often which also drives me crazy. (thanks lunarpages)

(Edited by Radical Rob on 10-30-2006 17:55)

Your footer looks plain to me...

Site permission: I assume you mean file permissions. The host probably regularly changes those to sensible ( and safe ) defaults, shouldn't matter with a simple include job like you're doing here.

You are sure you're clearing your cache (or have it set to 'always reload page'), and that you're actually working in the right directory, right?

Your tables are indeed quite messed up... but if those stray </table> tags aren't in your footer.php then they probably are found in podcast.php.


Honestly, it looks like a mess that's impossible to straighten out without looking at the sources

Hey Prime,
You're pretty much a CSS guy already right? How or what do you think would be the easiest way to convert this to a strictly CSS site?
I've taken over this site and they pretty much wanted it to stay the same (look wise) I just redid it using php includes to speed up updates.

Any suggestions that route?

Files http://playhpc.com/ftpuploads/phpproblems.sitx



(Edited by Radical Rob on 10-30-2006 18:50)

yeah...I don't think this has anything to do with PHP but with the markup.

If I look at the source of this page, I see this

<!-- Footer -->
	  <p><a href="index.php">Home</a> |
	  <a href="directions.php">Directions</a> | 
	  <a href="hotels.php">Hotels</a> |
	  <a href="careers.php">Careers</a> | 
	  <a href="aboutus.php">About Us</a><br /> 
	  <a href="articles.php">Articles</a> |
	  <a href="problemgambling.php">Responsible Gaming</a> | 
	  <a href="contactus.php">Contact Us</a><br />
©2006 Hollywood Park Casino. All rights reserved.</p>
Casino &copy; 2006 All Rights Reserved

l Rights Reserved
    </span> </div>
</span> </div>
egal">Hollywood Park Casino &copy; 2006 All Rights Reserved
          </p>
    </span> </div></td>
  </tr>
</table>[b]td>[/b]

look at the last td tag. td>

Then further down, we have this

<br />
	<a href="podcast.php"><img src="images/podcast.jpg" width="183" height="100" border="0" /></a>
	<a href="cheesecake.php"><img src="images/cheesecake.jpg" width="183" height="100" border="0" /></a> 
	<a href="lips.php"><img src="images/lipstourlogo_sml.jpg" alt="Lips Tour" border="0" /></a>	
	<a href="http://builder.campaigner.com/app/campaigner/services/optinlist/processoptinrequest.jsp?oilb=87591277&amp;builderType=free   " target="	&lt;a href=&quot;lips.php&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;images/lipstourlogo_sml.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Lips Tour&quot; border=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;"><img src="images/signup.gif" alt="Lips Tour" width="185" height="50" border="0" /></a>
  </tr>
</table>


[b]le>[/b]

Seems the last tag is supposed to be a table? I see le>

I bet if you find where those are supposed to be closed, you migh have it working.

quote:

---

Radical Rob said:

How or what do you think would be the easiest way to convert this to a strictly CSS site?

---

Can't speak for TP, but if I were you, I would take each page sepearte. You have already done some of this I am gathering with the PHP includes. Take each page and strip all the HTML stuff from it. Then go back and redo the site using CSS. There was an article where someone did a redesign of Slashdot a while back doing it this way. I'll see if I can dig that article up.

Later,

C:\

(Edited by CPrompt on 10-30-2006 20:02)

here ya go. Nice article

Later,

C:\

I'm afraid I can't open stuff-it at the machine I'm on right now ;(.

My css isn't quite as up to it as some of the others around here, but I've done my fair share of work in it...

Looks like a simple three column layout, fixed height for the div in the background (surrounding the 3 column layout),
little worries about them lining up at the bottom, too,
couple of styles for the lists on the left, just a simple display:inline list for the 'players club' navi,

and well... a designer next time. The graphics just look as if they're more or less randomly stuck together, and
I don't even want to know what they were thinking when doing that 'view our monthly calendar' picture - that blue
clashes with the whole site for me

Hey Cprompt.... so you do see the garbage code!!

I just showed my coworker these exact steps.... follow closely...

1) open the footer.php file
2) delete all uneeded code (the jibberish)
3) save the file
4) re-open the file
5) JIBBERISH STILL THERE!!!! AAAAGGHH!

Maybe I should wait till after Halloween?? I'm losing it here... now all throughout the site there is wierd stuff going on.
i need a beer.


Oh and TP, yeah... you should have seen it before I "cleaned it up". Problem is there are so many people that want to "weigh" in on the site that I just shrug my shoulders and say "Green background? Blue text? Pink links? Ok no problem." Kinda frustrating but a gig is a gig eh!


(Edited by Radical Rob on 10-30-2006 20:30)

Hm... where and when are you editing that file?
I just had the very same behaviour in a cms today, and it was unix file permissions gone way of whack .

Im using my Mac at work, using Dreamweaver.

Delete the file. Copy paste good back in. Hope it get's the way you want it

how about opening the page in question in some other form of editor? I am sure there's a Notepad sort of program on Mac

I would edit it there and see if it still shows up.

Later,

C:\

If you are on a Mac try using BBEdit or BlueFish. Both are great for working with php/html.

/* Sure, go ahead and code in your fancy IDE. Just remember: it's all fun and games until someone puts an $i out */