Smarty is a template engine for PHP. More specifically, it facilitates a manageable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation. This is best described in a situation where the application programmer and the template designer play different roles, or in most cases are not the same person. Some of Smarty's features: * It is extremely fast. * It is efficient since the PHP parser does the dirty work. * No template parsing overhead, only compiles once. * It is smart about recompiling only the template files that have changed. * You can easily create your own custom functions and variable modifiers, so the template language is extremely extensible. * Configurable template {delimiter} tag syntax, so you can use {$foo}, {{$foo}}, , etc. * The {if}..{elseif}..{else}..{/if} constructs are passed to the PHP parser, so the {if...} expression syntax can be as simple or as complex an evaluation as you like. * Allows unlimited nesting of sections, if's etc. * Built-in caching support * Arbitrary template sources * Custom cache handling functions * Template Inheritance for easy management of template content. * Plugin architecture See the Documentation at http://www.smarty.net/documentation for instructions on how to configure PHP & Smarty to work together. Smarty gets installed under /usr/lib/php/Smarty, so to use it, in standard configuration it should be enough to use the following PHP code: require_once( 'Smarty/Smarty.class.php' );