Sorry for the crappy topic, I'm not sure what this is called.

What I would like to do is to have a page that has all the formatting, headers, footers, navigation, etc.. built in. It would have a blank spot in the middle. As people click links from the site, the center would be populated with the information which is read from a database (doesn't have to be a database). I know this could be accomplished with frames, but I don't want to use frames.

If someone could just even tell me what this is called so I can get started in the right direction.

Thanks.

That's pretty much how everything works these days.
Most people are moving away from WYSIWYG editors where you have to lay out each page and either using Blogging, online CMS like Joomla or Client Side CMS (db to html) like our Superblogging. All just have basic templates where the text is replaced by data placement codes.
Just take your pick based on their speed, simplicity or features required.

At this point you will be advised to start off with a simple Content Management System (CMS). They cover all the functions you want and more.

Formatting is done using CSS.
Elements are controlled and displayed using HTML, whose presentation is manipulated by CSS.
Page to database link is done through server-side scripting (e.g. PHP and ASP).

A combination of the above three in an appropriate fashion get's your CMS.

So it looks like PHP may be the way to go. Imagine that I have a header, footer, and body section of my documents. I then use the php include function to call .html files to the header and footer which are static throughout the site. How then would I setup my menu for the body section. If the site was larger than 20 or 30 pages, the menu would be quite complex.

Your menu should only direct people to the sections where different content-types appear. For example, you wouldn't have a menu pointing to every single article on a website. It would become too long and complex. You'd only have a menu item pointing at archives / month (year) or at categories / category.

I personnally suggest using a premade CMS or blogging tool (as a simple CMS). You can easily extend it at any point. Why do all the hard work when someone else has done it for you?

I've been looking at Joomla. What is your opinion of this product?

I don't like it. But many people do. I think it is better associated for opensource projects, not personal sites.

I use WordPress, which is a blogging platform. I am planning on migrating to ExpressionEngine (which I find much nicer to use and easier in the templating).

However, if you want an easy to follow and use CMS, I would suggest CMS Made Simple the default template of the CMS has what you basically want. You can easily customise it to look better and display what you want differently.

Hey, thanks for the info. I will take a look at CMS Made Simple as you suggest.

At the same time, most of my sites will be focused on ecommerce. Do you think CMS Made Simple will be able to accomadate this?

I appreciate your help so far. Thanks.

I am a big fan of Xoops CMS (http://xoops.org). It is a very mature project with many free modules including several ecommerce modules. My first site in my signature is a xoops based site, check it out to see what you think.

Great, thanks for the additional info. I'll try out Xoops as well.