I have been fairly happy with my use of master pages on my site (once I started using site root paths for the components, that is). But I came across this posting on a blog for master pages that uses a slightly different method that would allow me to have a master page effect by using components rather than a specific master page.
The blogger is Chris Weldon and here is the URL for the post that inspired my change: http://www.chrisweldon.net/2009/03/31/php-meet-master-pages. Of course it goes into much greater depth than is needed for my site coding, but the framework is perfect for my needs.
I’ll post the code and discussion in my next entry.