PHP header file isn't working in a subfolder

Question

I have a reviews page on my website, and I wanted my website to be extremely user friendly, so I made it a sub-index. I have my index.php under a folder named reviews (found here) so the domain is just /reviews. When I try to include a PHP or CSS it abandons them and excludes them.

The code I am using to include my CSS (which is working on every other page) is:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/stylesheets/index.css">

The PHP include() that I'm using is:

<?php 
    include('header.php');
?>

This PHP works on all pages that do not use a parent folder, ex. index.php (for my homepage).

The HTML in the PHP document is:

<html>
<center><nav>
<ul>
    <li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
    <li><a href="">Arcade</a>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="/arcade/action">Action</a></li>
            <li><a href="/arcade/arcade">Arcade</a></li>
            <li><a href="/arcade/puzzle">Puzzle</a></li>
            <li><a href="/arcade/vehicle">Vehicle</a></li>
            <li><a href="/arcade/violence">Violence</a></li>
            <li><a href="/arcade/defense">Defense</a></li>
            <li><a href="/arcade/rpg">RPG</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="">Watch</a>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="/watch/tv">TV Shows</a></li>
            <li><a href="/watch/movies">Movies</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="">Extras</a>
        <ul>

            <li><a href="/news">Updates</a></li>
        </ul>
    </li>
    <li><a href="/support">Support</a></li>
</ul>
</nav></center>
</html>

Anybody know any solutions to get my PHP and my CSS working in sub-folders?

My website is http://www.gameshank.com/

The homepage is using the header.php file!

include with a filename is relative to the working directory. the example you give having to work depends on the include path setting. turn it into a filanem starting with ./ or ../ to not make use of the include path and additionally absolutize via __DIR__ magic constant if you like it more expressive to the file itself, not the working directory. — hakre
– hakre, Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 20:00
@fred that's probably not going to work, because chances are / is not the root of the site but some obscure PHP folder. Rather, either find out the server root and use an absolute path from that, or keep it relative and use include('../header.php'); on pages under a directory. — LS97
– LS97, Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 20:02
And log warnings to file, so you can see in the PHP error log what the actual error message is: How to get useful error messages in PHP? - PHP normally tells you what the issue is, you only need to "listen" to it :) — hakre
– hakre, Commented Aug 27, 2013 at 20:02

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:29:11Z

4

If you know that header.php is in the same directory as from the file you want to include it to:

include(__DIR__ . '/header.php');

This is immune to changes in the working directory and therefore pretty fail-safe.

Magic constants ^Docs

You might find as well the following Q&A interesting:

Also it's important to understand the difference between the CSS-URL (URL-path is resolved in the browser) and the paths in PHP (those file-paths are resolved on the server, the browser is yet far far away).

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:29

CommunityBot

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answered Aug 27, 2013 at 20:04

hakre

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2 Comments

Austin Bunker Over a year ago

This brings up two error messages: Warning: include(/home/gameshan/public_html/reviews/header.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/gameshan/public_html/reviews/index.php on line 5 Warning: include(): Failed opening '/home/gameshan/public_html/reviews/header.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/gameshan/public_html/reviews/index.php on line 5

hakre Over a year ago

Well in which directory is the file header.php and in which file is the include command? In my example code both are in the same directory (as written in the first sentence). You need to adopt that to your case, so if you tell both filenames this should be easy to solve. Info: You see two errors, but they both belong together, so this is one issue. If you fix it, both errors go away at once.

Wim Molenberghs · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-27 19:59:36Z

0

Does this work?

$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'];
$path .= "/header.php";
include($path);

answered Aug 27, 2013 at 19:59

Wim Molenberghs

9028 silver badges7 bronze badges

1 Comment

hakre Over a year ago

this is more a comment than an answer

Austin Bunker · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-27 20:38:02Z

-1

Call the .PHP file by:

<?php
    include('../header.php')
?>

The /../header.php won't work either...

Then clear your browser history and cookies, then it works from the editing end of things.

Strange fix, but it worked. But until the editor was cleared of history and cookies, it wouldn't work.

answered Aug 27, 2013 at 20:38

Austin Bunker

531 gold badge3 silver badges14 bronze badges

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