I am brand new to PHP. I want to use it to include a universal header and footer in an html/jquery site. Currently I am using includes to do this:
<?php include('../includes/footer.php'); ?>
This works fine. Where I encounter a problem is with any images in the header or footer.
An explanation of my file structure:
Root folder: contains index.php and the folders "includes", "img", "php" etc.
php folder: contains gallery.php
includes folder: contains header.php, footer.php
When viewing the index.php all images in the header and footer show properly, but, because they are linked relatively (ex "img/facebook.png"), the do not show in gallery.php. To work they would need a ../ included. But then this would defeat the purpose of a universal header.
Thus I am trying to figure out how to link the images in the includes files in way that is doesn't matter where the php file is located. I have read this thread (which sounds like my problem) but I do not understand any of the answers. I have also read things that suggest $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] .'/folder/';, in conjunction with an echo to display the image. I tried this in my footer.php with this code:
<?php
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/img/';
$image = ($path . "facebook.png");
echo "<img src=\"$image\" />"; ?>
When I view the page though, I end up with a little torn paper icon instead of my image. I assume this means that the path is incorrect, but I do not know why. facebook.png resides in the img folder. This problem occurs on both index.php and gallery.php.
After this rather long winded explanation (sorry), my mains questions are:
1) How do I get images to show up properly in my includes across multiple directories?
2) If I am going about this in the right way with the echo, what are the possible reasons why it is not working?
Once again, I know nothing about php, so if you could try to make your answers as basic as possible, it would be much appreciated.
Thank you!
