I want to use includes for my menus that will be on every page so that I don't always have to go on every single page to make changes.

Which extension should i use :
.php or .shtml ?

Which will run faster?

I don't think it's a matter of what run's faster, I DO believe it's a matter of server support, don't quote me on that, but I *think* that's the case. Use ssi if you don't have access to php on your server, then again, I think ssi is faster because of the way it's implemented into the webpage. Again, don't quote me on any of this, you should google it first.

EDIT: Nope -- the php parser is faster, but actually your bandwidth will be the determining factor for the scripts speed.

No matter which one is faster, you are most likely gonna have to do hundreds or maybe thousands of includes on every page in order to actually notice any difference.

I prefer using PHP (even if PHP files contain nothing except plain HTML code)

I'm not sure there is a huge amount of difference. although you need SSI to use shtml. For what its worth I would suggest php, because if you later add php code you can just dump it in rather than changing everything else as well.

use php

Here is a thread to a tutorial that will show you how to do it with php and sql check it out. I hope I am not breaking any rules putting a link to another forum here.
http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/...atabase-10354/

Originally Posted by hoco

I want to use includes for my menus that will be on every page so that I don't always have to go on every single page to make changes.

Which extension should i use :
.php or .shtml ?

Which will run faster?

It doesnt matter what extension you use. You should focus on how many images do you have and its file type or file size coz it affects the performance of the site. You should also consider the execution perfomed by the script ( ie. query, function, loops)

Thanks to all.

I'm going to start recoding it all with PHP tonight.

I can't see any advantage to using .shtml.

Good choice! PHP allows you to add extra features to included files (so you can add various classes and other stuff in the future if it's needed)