[eluser]adityamenon[/eluser]
1. Did you consider cutting out the header area of your page and putting it in a different view? Then one change will reflect across the entire website. You still have to repeat yourself, unfortunately, but that's only one line $this->load->view('header_area');
2. If you want a piece of data to appear in a view, and don't feel like using HMVC or putting any code at all (other than if conditions and echos, of course) in your view (I always feel uncomfortable with that), you must consider generating it with a library and a helper. Make a library to do all the data generation. Use the helper as an interface functions file. That way, you can avoid get_instance() in your view files.