Craig Freshwater, explains how in this new blog entry, PHP can be used to template your site with a few quick and easy steps.
PHP can be very useful in your website design, I use PHP for my websites difficult functions such as forums, blogs, chat, user forms, and shopping cart interface. But did you know you can use simple PHP for your website navigation systems?
The use of PHP for your websites header, left side navigation, and bottom of page information can be a great asset. Now I know what you are thinking, PHP can be complicated and intimidating to many of you, but first let me explain.
He tells it more from an "outsider's perspective", for someone not really familiar with PHP. There's a lot of introductory explaination and installation instructions on getting PHP working, but he does eventually get to the (very) simple templating example.
http://www.dmgamer.com/mb/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=11875