PHP Tutorial – Include File
Without understanding much about the details of PHP, you can save yourself a great deal of time with the use of the PHP include function. The include function takes a file name and simply inserts that file's contents into the script that calls used the include function.
Why is this a cool thing? Well, first of all, this means that you can type up a common header or menu file that you want all your web pages to include. When you add a new page to your site, instead of having to update the links on several web pages, you can simply change the Menu file.