I found the code in the following link to be very interesting. What I've been looking for is a clean way to show an external URL page inside my drupal framework, so that my sidebars, header and footer still show and when users interact with the linked page it stays inside that content area:
http://drupal.org/node/40756
I'm currently using iframes, which mostly do what I'm looking for, but they are a bit tempermental, and I'm not a coder so I don't know exactly how to make them work exactly right. Here's one of my iframed pages:
http://www.ubuntuwebservers.com/Ubuntu-Server-Forum
and here's the code I use (linked to screencap because Drupal forums wouldn't let me post it, even with code brackets):
http://www.ubuntuwebservers.com/iframecode.jpg
Notice that when you click a link within the page that you stay on my website, but can interact with the external page. The problem with that page is that the iframe doesn't automatically extend to the full length (and sometimes width) of the linked page, so I end up with scroll bars, which is not convenient for my users. I understand that sometimes a external page will be fixed-width, and there's nothing I can do about scroll bars in that case, but most pages (such as the one linked above) will resize as the browser window is made larger/smaller).
bslade's php code is very close to what I'm looking for, but whenever I click a link within the internal linked page it immediately takes me from my website to that page in fullpage mode, or does some other odd thing. Here are couple examples of what I mean: