Even better, you can use PHP's auto-prepend and auto-append feature to put your headers and footers on automatically, and cut down on the number of include calls on your page. But that involves fiddling with .htaccess, and we don't want to scare anyone off if they're new to php or includes.
I hope you're entering this one into the contest, and here's another reply just in case you are! (Got that 6-reply requirement, hehe)