integrating XHTML output into an existing site

[Brett Leber <bleber+@cs.cmu.edu>]

All,

I've authored a document in DocBook 5, and would like to publish it to 
our group's web site. The main challenge is to integrate the XHTML 
output with our existing site's framework and styles. Existing pages on 
the site are generally page fragments that are included via PHP. At the 
top of existing pages, a few PHP variables are set, and a top-of-page 
PHP fragment is included. This means that any page on the site has no 
opening and closing body tags, or any of the content that appears before 
the opening body tag or after the closing body tag--this content is all 
included by the parent PHP page, index.php. (I will take reasonable 
criticism for this framework, but it would be rather off-topic.)

I see a few approaches, and would appreciate any feedback:

1) Create a docbook customization so that only the 'content' of the 
page--everything within the body tag--is produced; then include this 
file via PHP.

2) Create a docbook customization so that requisite PHP is added at the 
top of the document, and only the contents of the xhtml document's body 
is created. This is much like (1), but better fits the site's framework.

3) Output a full xhtml document--sans-customization--and manipulate it 
via PHP's DOM functions to include the content of the body node. (I've 
never used PHP's DOM functionality, but this approach seems somewhat 
reasonable.)

I would guess that I'm not the first to encounter a problem like this; 
but I haven't read anything that addresses the challenges of this 
situation. I'm also relatively new to DocBook (and new to the list), so 
pardon my ignorance if I'm on the wrong path.

Best,

Brett