Advice please on best way to set Global Information

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]
[quote author="Opel" date="1236615539"]
At the moment I have function running at the top of my template that explodes the URL and then makes the necessary lookup. I wasn't sure if it was better to use hooks to run the function or if there is a parent class in CI that runs prior to other controllers?[/quote]

You mean like this:
[url="http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/107767/"]http://ellislab.com/forums/viewthread/107767/[/url]

But you probably don't want to call views from within the parent controller class. I'm generating menu data there, f.e, but still calling from within my default view-php files.