Adding PHP tags into a template
 

I know php pretty well, though I am completely new to smarty. I seem to be have problems just doing something as simple as adding a file call into templates (ie: <?php require("path/to/blah.php"); ?>). Is the smarty engine parsing the php incorrectly? It seems as though that the php tag is not functioning as a script, but just as plain text. When I view source on the page that includes this php tag, it shows up as plain text in the source, but is not apparent on the web page itself.

The best reference point for you is the smarty web site: http://smarty.php.net/

but the php include function is slightly different to a php script :

{* absolute path, or relative to $trusted_dir *}
{include_php file="/path/to/included_file.php"}