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PHP Build a Simple PHP Application Creating the Menu and Footer Introducing Conditionals

Posted by Byron Anderson
Byron Anderson
7,009 Points

header appearance all screwy after applying conditionals! (why??)

my index page now shows a big white block over/around the SHIRTS page link: after applying conditional codes to show the underline indicating the nav link is of the current page, this effect appeared. In the video, he doesn't navigate to the index page (just SHIRTS and CONTACT, showing the code worked), so I wasn't able to determine if he had this same issue, or not. Please & Thank You!

1 Answer

Jason Anello
Jason Anello
Courses Plus Student 94,610 Points

Hi Byron,

This happens because the $section variable is undefined on the home page. It was never set to a value because it wasn't needed. php outputs a notice error which causes the problems you see on the page.

One solution is to set the section variable to something on the index page. $section = home; for example, but you have to remember to always do this for every page whether the variable is needed on that page or not.

The solution I went with is to check first if the $section variable is set before trying to use it.

<li class="shirts<?php if ( isset($section) && $section == "shirts") { echo " on"; } ?>"><a href="shirts.php">Shirts</a></li>
<li class="contact<?php if ( isset($section) && $section == "contact") { echo " on"; } ?>"><a href="contact.php">Contact</a></li>
Byron Anderson
Byron Anderson
7,009 Points

that worked!

I'm sorry it took me this long to respond, funny thing was that when I published this set of work to my server/site, the issue I had with that white block around the SHIRTS link in the banner of my root index page was gone.

I don't understand how, or why it was only appearing as a problem on my localhost address, but alas...

anyway, you were right. There needed to be a $section variable set to the value "home" under the $pageTitle variable on the index.php file in the root directory to the site.

excellence! Thank You.