So, you've graduated from a normal, "few page" site and feel like you want to move up in the PHP world and try your hand at a larger product. You start asking around, and people recommend that you use a template engine to help you manage the output and layout of your site. So, you start to look into those, but the sheer number of them, and the different features of them all is starting to make your head swim.

Well, fear not! The O'Reilly Network has something to help make your life a little bit easier. One of the most widely used templating engines out there today is Smarty, a creation that allows you to use "smart" templates that are converted into PHP scripts for faster execution times. And, as promised, O'Reilly is there to help.

In this article, they give you a good overview of how to get started using this templating system for your site, and what kinds of benefits that it can provide. And they finish it off with a "real world" example that helps you understand how your code will flow once you have this system installed. And, coupled with the PHP Accelerator, the templates execute even faster...