How Would You Arrange Your Website Layout?

Hey guys! Here's a nice big discussion about website layouts and their ability to be changed dynamically and easily.

In my case, I'm developing a shopping cart system and it allows me to create a layout and paste the navigation text and the content text using two PHP tags:

<?php require("navigation.php"); ?>

PHP:

<?php require("content.php"); ?>

PHP:

It's quite flexible, and the navigation code can indeed be broken up into separate files containing different parts of the navigation for a little more flexibility, but I'm wondering: Is this the most effective way of designing my system?

How would you design the flexibility of your website?
Would you make it have several PHP tags to insert your content in specific ways? How easy would you make it for other people to create a layout and just slap on those tags?

I find my system fast and effective, but I can't help but wonder what other kind of clever layout flexibility ideas other people may have.

Care to share yours?

-Curtis

 

I do this -

<?php
include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/skin.php');
echo $header;
?>

Code (markup):

 

An admin CP that lets the user drag/drop and edit all features of the layout.

both user friendly, and extremely flexible.