include external php in the view through a loop and pass variables to it

[eluser]Spredemann[/eluser]
as I said, my page is made up of parts, like the default header and footer, plus pieces like the navigation sidebar, the main content area, a right sidebar with friends and stuff.

I thought that doing so would be useful to be able to reuse the same templates over and over and when I modify the template, it will be modified everywhere. I don't know if that is a good practice or common as I am also kind of new to php, coming from an actionscript background.

Anyway, as the comments are right in the middle of the html code, I thought that I would put some php code into the view itself to loop through the data sent by the controller containing a multidimensional array of comments... Is that a good idea or is there another way that I'm missing???

The header and footer are being called by the controller though..

I have found that doing a

Code:

$this->load->view ('viewpath', $data)

also works in the view.. Now the question is... is this good practice? is this how people do?! I'm lost!