heres the page without the sidebar as an include
heres the page with the sidebar as an include

why is the include pushing the content div down the page?

In the second one, when you view source there is an extra div compared to the first one near the start of the sidebar area.

so should I remove the div tags that surround the sidebar content in sidebar.php?

Edit tryed that but the sidebar just covers the whole of the container div

You have some real layout issues there to contend with. I'd help, but I can't possibly dig into that until I get home.

The page is never going to validate as even XHTML Transitional, you've got too much old deprecated code in there, like 'align="center"' and <center>. CSS should be used for that.

joder has helped, but don't think the include was used as it was html not php. I therefor changed it to php and added the code but still the content is pushed to the bottom.

That extra <div> is part of sidebar.php and if I remove that and the </div> that goes with it, the sidebar goes across the whole page as mentioned above.

link 1 // link 2

The code I sent you, you can cut part out and put it in the file to be included. I removed all the extra <div>'s and none to be added because it is an include file.

You can include an html as well as a php file.