I'm at the point where I've finally got my site setup in Dreamweaver and looking the way I want it to in my browsers. Now I'm wondering what the most efficient method would be to get each page to show up through the site's navigation. I was reading up on php includes but i'm not sure if i understand it right. Is it that, say I have a "Contact Us" page with the info for that page in a plain html file, what's the right way to include the consistent aspects of my site, like the navigation, header, footer, content area..etc. Do I just have the <div> tags in the "Contact Us" page and then put the php include code in between the tags for each of them? (header,footer,content area,nav).

I don't think I understand.
Are you asking how to include a header.. with php ?

So then do that:
<?php include('filename'); ?>
If you put that in contactus.html, rename it to contactus.php
PHP script installation
If you don't want to rename files to php: run php script in html

I hope this will help you.

Ok I think I need some clarification on a few things. I have a bunch of divs setup in my "template" page (the consistent layout of my site, header,footer, navigation, content area.) Do I have to put the header, footer, navigation, and content area into seperate include files? and then call them with php includes within the other pages (Contact page, Testimonials page..etc)? The other thing I'm unsure about is for example my Contact page, do I just put whatever text and images I want on that page directly in it along with the includes for the header, footer, content area, and navigation? Sorry for the confusion, I'm relatively new to php.