Includes in template.php

[Taildragger]

Do I need to do anything special to add php code to template.php?  I added a little bit of code in the middle of the template file (a random banner picker) and it garfed up the whole thing.  I had to ftp the template.php down and undo the changes to get back up and running.  The php code works fine in a stand alone file.

When I looked at the source for the messed up forum, it looked normal up to the first php call (which was an include), then it just stopped.  No errors or anything, just stopped.

Any ideas what might be goin on?

Thanks.