Integrating WordPress with a website, generically

So, I’ve read The Loop and I got the hang of it. (I created a page that lists the 3 most recent posts, a page that shows a page (as opposed to a post), and so on.)

However, it seems silly that, in order to integrate a WordPress blog into an existing site, I’d have to replicate all the different kinds of pages (lists of posts, the posts themselves, pages, etc.)

Is there a generic way of doing this?

The full idea is something like this.

• The blog itself (with its ugly default template) is installed at http://blog.example.com.
• I want to integrate the blog into an existing site, at the URL http://example.com/blog.
• I’m doing a mod_rewrite that forwards the entire query string, e.g. http://blog.example.com/?p=7 gets rewritten to http://example.com/blog?p=7.

Now, in my PHP code at http://example.com/blog, I want to do something like this:

query_posts($_GET);

// display results

wp_reset_query();

That’s where I’m stuck. Basically, I want to display exactly what’s in the “content” area of a default WordPress template, on my site, according to whatever the query string dictates. Almost as if I were just using an iframe. I would rather not have to parse the query string to figure out whether I have to loop through this or that or turn off the $more global or not, etc.

What am I missing?

Instead, should I be installing the blog at http://example.com/blog and creating a template that mimics the website? This seemed complicated so I didn’t go this route, but maybe someone should change my mind.

Appreciate any help, including advice for alternative designs.