HTML - Change\Update page contents without refreshing\reloading the page

Solution 1:

You've got the right idea, so here's how to go ahead: the onclick handlers run on the client side, in the browser, so you cannot call a PHP function directly. Instead, you need to add a JavaScript function that (as you mentioned) uses AJAX to call a PHP script and retrieve the data. Using jQuery, you can do something like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
function recp(id) {
  $('#myStyle').load('data.php?id=' + id);
}
</script>

<a href="#" onClick="recp('1')" > One   </a>
<a href="#" onClick="recp('2')" > Two   </a>
<a href="#" onClick="recp('3')" > Three </a>

<div id='myStyle'>
</div>

Then you put your PHP code into a separate file: (I've called it data.php in the above example)

<?php
  require ('myConnect.php');     
  $id = $_GET['id'];
  $results = mysql_query("SELECT para FROM content WHERE  para_ID='$id'");   
  if( mysql_num_rows($results) > 0 )
  {
   $row = mysql_fetch_array( $results );
   echo $row['para'];
  }
?>

Solution 2:

jQuery will do the job. You can use either jQuery.ajax function, which is general one for performing ajax calls, or its wrappers: jQuery.get, jQuery.post for getting/posting data. Its very easy to use, for example, check out this tutorial, which shows how to use jQuery with PHP.