Why Choose PHP?

[Terr]

So do you mean, that instead of starting each page with

session_start();
$_POST = array_merge($_POST, $_GET);

I can write a handler which automatically puts them at the top of each page?

Basically. In an .htaccess file

Action handlemystuff /handler.php
AddHandler handlemystuff .myext
DirectoryIndex index.myext index.php index.html index.htm

Then create index.myext:

This is an index!
<?php print("One plus one is :".(1+1)); ?>

Then, in /handler.php:

<?php
$file = $_SERVER['PATH_INFO'];
$path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].$file;
session_start();
$_POST = array_merge($_POST, $_GET);

include("header.php");
include($path);
include("footer.php");
?>

You will probably want to put something in .htaccess to make it so that people can't directly visit handler.php, as well as some extra checks (realpath() + substring comparison) to make sure that nobody is trying to pass you a PATH_INFO value which isn't in the right directories.

Another benefit from this technique is that you can define another handler and another filetype, and pass in XML files which can be translated to HTML on the fly. Or you can do search-replace within the file, or set/unset various PHP variables depending on exactly where the file is located.