Is there a particular reason you need the article pages to be PHP instead of HTML, or is that just what you think you have to do?
Is it important that the same "random outline text" stay at the top of the page?
Is it important that the page as a whole not refresh when you select a new article? Why? If this is the case, you want javascript to do this (don't ask me how, I don't write js).

With ez-pages, you could always repeat the outline text at the top of each page. There will be a table of contents at the top of the page showing which page you are on.