What are the best practices for including external stylesheets in PHP files?

When including external stylesheets in PHP files, it is best practice to use the <link> tag within the <head> section of the HTML document. This ensures that the stylesheet is properly linked and loaded before the page content is rendered. Additionally, using relative paths for the href attribute in the <link> tag allows for easier maintenance and portability of the code.

&lt;!DOCTYPE html&gt;
&lt;html&gt;
&lt;head&gt;
    &lt;title&gt;Page Title&lt;/title&gt;
    &lt;link rel=&quot;stylesheet&quot; type=&quot;text/css&quot; href=&quot;styles.css&quot;&gt;
&lt;/head&gt;
&lt;body&gt;
    &lt;h1&gt;Hello, World!&lt;/h1&gt;
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;