All right. I have a problem here to make the header and footer. If I call the template which has the html code inside, the header and footer can be displayed but the content of the php page is not displayed. In fact, in my php page, I have also included the html stuff. What I fail is calling the $header, $footer, and $headinclude variable. If I don't want to create template, how should I call these variables in my php page? Hope you understand what I mean.

Is it something like this to call the variable?

eval("\$header = \"".gettemplate('header')."\";");

I am confused here....in the php page..I just put the variable like $header in the place where I want it to be shown..and it works except the button pictures are not displayed..I am still confused how to call the variable. What is require("global.php") for?

require("./global"); requires root/global.php which just calls basic things vB needs (header,footer,user stuff etc)

so when i call the variables like $header, $footer, $includeheader, I will need to put require("./global") right? But, after putting require and when I put the variables in my php page, it can be displayed but with some errors (e.g. no button pictures in header)

Are you still talking about competition.php? It should work as I described above if it is the forum directory. If it is outside the fourm directory, you will have to make the image paths absolute in the admin CP.

Yeah..it's the competition.php. The file is in the forum directory. I don't know why I can't display the picture? But, if like you said creating the template and the template is just the html code inside, and in my competition.php page I also echo the html tag, isn't that would collide with the dooutput of the template content? I am confused right now. Or I should move all the html code in competition.php to the template? I hope you can help me. thank you.