I'm trying to figure out the best way to design my site so that the layout can be changed by the user. The users will be able to decide which layout they want out of a selection that I've made. The general page will be the same, all the stuff before each page's individual content and then all the stuff afterwards is what changes for each different layout (as well as things in the page like buttons, and the image of the page title). For example, the background, top banner and navigation, and the left menu changes, as well as the copyright and the stuff that concludes the page on the bottom. I've been reading about SMARTY, but I don't know if it would be able to change the layout depending on the user's preference (which would be stored in a MySQL database). I don't want to use many includes, because that's supposed to slow down load time. I also want the layouts completely defined in an outside file, to make it more maintainable.

I'm very new to PHP, so I appreciate the help. I hope I made myself understandable.

Use Smarty (http://smarty.php.net/). If you understand it right then you will just have to create multiple templates and store id of selected template for each user. If you try this template engine you will really find out how simple it is.