Variations of "else" statement

Hi Damon

I have two section records:  

1) courses - which have the all of the course information.  Course either have date(s) which have been assigned, or no dates yet, and then there are also online courses which don't need dates, and

2) calendar - which has the course dates.  The fields in this section are:

• course name ('title') which is from a pull down field from the courses records section
• date (date field)
• online course (check box) - if ticked, then it will ignore the date to... 
• URL - (text box) ... display the URL to purchase the online course

Yes, you are correct, I want:

1. Course with course date
   - display course with course date
2. Course without course date
   - display course with "Contact us for our next course dates"
3. Course marked as online
   - display course with "Start the course now"  -  this is the URL to purchase the online course

The date default to Wed, November 30th occurs when I create a new calendar date and don't select a date (ie, the date box is DAY MONTH YEAR field).  If I don't select a date, that's when this problem occurs.

These are the calendar fields

<?php foreach ($calendarRecords as $record): ?>
Record Number: <?php echo htmlencode($record['num']) ?><br/>
Course (value): <?php echo $record['title'] ?><br/>
Course (label): <?php echo $record['title:label'] ?><br/>
Date: <?php echo date("D, M jS, Y g:i:s a", strtotime($record['date'])) ?><br/>
Online Course (value): <?php echo $record['online_course'] ?><br/>
Online Course (text): <?php echo $record['online_course:text'] ?><br/>
URL: <?php echo htmlencode($record['url']) ?><br/>
_link : <a href="<?php echo $record['_link'] ?>"><?php echo $record['_link'] ?></a><br/>
<hr/>
<?php endforeach ?>

But I don't know how to use the IF / ELSE scenario to enable this to occur.  I hope that provides enough information?

Thanks in advance.