I was just wondering why no code-behind or helpers were made to work with layouts? I have stuff I want to display in my layouts without having to set it up in a placeholder for every single controller.
I was also wanted to know what is the best way to persist a display-once "success-message" across many pages. For example, a user fills out a form and when it is submitted correctly they are redirected to another page. I want the user to see a success message on that other page. Is there some sort of provision in Zend Framework that makes this easier?
Well for the messages you can use the Flash Messenger helper
As far as setting up the place holders you could use a base controller and set these up in the init method overriding on descendents when necessary.