theme template question

[sdunnin]

I was wondering if someone could explain to me in laymans terms how the placement of the placeholder items  (e.g {MAIN_MENU} ) in template.html affect whether or not the actual content from the php code gets displayed. I have created a custom version of  template.html and depending on where I place the placeholders in the html determines if the actual gallery content is displayed or just the literal string of the placeholder. I'm pretty certain that the way the php theme code is written impacts how these placeholder tags get processed. I can probably pour over the php and figure it out but was hoping that a coppermine expert could perhaps give me a pointer to get me in the right direction quicker.

Thanks!

[Nibbler]

Placeholders positioned above/before {GALERY} are handled by the page header function, those below are handled by the page footer function.

[donnoman]

Read the sticky thread from Fking in this forum, thats the best overview I've seen posted.