I am busting my brain with this. It seem simple I tried it a few ways and it is not working how I want it.
I would like for example the return policy document to be in the main content box of my page only when a person click on "Return/Exchange" link.
Right now it is opening to a plain white page. I am trying to get it to be in the center of my page when open so that my site can flow.

This is my link http://heinzandlora.com/index.php , I place the link in the footer. I created it by using a include("menu.inc.php") to make it easier. I saw this all over the net

It would be perfect for all the links in the footer to be open in the main content body of the page.

index.php

<?php
session_start();
ob_start();
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Vanessia Hair Studio</title>

<script language="javascript">AC_FL_RunContent = 0;</script>
<script src="AC_RunActiveContent.js" language="javascript"></script>
<link href="frontpage.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />


<?php
   include("mylibrary/login.php");
   include("mylibrary/showproducts.php");   login();
?><body>
<table width="80%" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
  <tr>
    <td id="header" height="90" colspan="3">
<?php include("header.inc.php"); ?></td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td id="nav" width="15%" valign="top">
<?php include("nav.inc.php"); ?> </td>

    <td id="main" width="50%" valign="top">
    

<?php
$url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$pieces = explode('/', $url);
$page = $pieces[sizeof($pieces) - 1];

if($page == 'index.php')
{
include("flash.inc.php");
}
?>
 
  <?php
             if (!isset($_REQUEST['content']))
                include("main.inc.php");
             else
             {
                $content = $_REQUEST['content'];
                $nextpage = $content . ".inc.php";
                include($nextpage);
             }
           ?></td>
    <td id="status" width="15%" valign="top">
  <?php include("cart.inc.php"); ?></td>
  </tr>
  
  <tr>
    <td id="footer" colspan="3">
  <div align="center">
  <?php include("footer.inc.php"); ?>
  </div></td>
  </tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
<?php
ob_end_flush();
?>

menu.inc.php

<a href="return_exchange_policy.php">Return Exchange</a>|
 <a href="shipping_policy.php">Shipping Policy</a> | 
 <a href="privacy_and_security.php">Privacy and Security</a> |
 <a href="companyinfo.php">Company Info</a> |
 <a href="customer_care.php">Customer Care</a>

footer.inc.php

<?php include("menu.inc.php"); ?><br />

<a href="#"><font size="1">Contact Us</font></a><font size="1"> | &copy;2009 Lora Tiben </font>

What am I doing wrong?

This happens because you are opening a new php file. You would need to use e.g. index.php?page=linkexchange and test in your index.php if linkexchange is set, and then show different content.

Another option is to create a function to setup the basic layout and call it in every php file.

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