Jakeman, with regards to parsing html pages as php -
There is absolutely no difference if a page is called something.php or something.html - zero difference.
You can write an html page and in any point place <?php echo $something ?> (for example). Then, you can save that page as .html or .php - the parsing and the output will be identical.
You can look at my site
http://www.atlasf1.com -- except for the Bulletin Board, almost all pages are .html and yet they ALL have php in them.