SSI - Server Side Includes

Server Side Includes can do alot for your site. If your ISP (Internet service provider) has it enabled then you should give it a try.

Akmal Khan Sapay

.2004.12.03.

You have certainly visited sites with a menu on the left side which is identical on all the pages. What if you need to change, say, a link on the left menu. Will you have to change it in all the pages of your site? Terrible eh? Well not at all if you use SSI.

What are Server Side Includes?
You may have noticed as you browse that some pages end with the shtml extension instead of the more familiar html or htm. This is because these pages use Server Side Includes (SSI). Used properly, the SSI can help make your pages more responsive and can even help make maintaining your site an easier task.

SSI (Server Side Includes) are directives that are placed in HTML pages, and evaluated on the server while the pages are being served. They let you add dynamically generated content to an existing HTML page, without having to serve the entire page via a CGI program, or other dynamic technology.

But in this tutorial we will be learning about one of the most popular and useful uses of SSI that is to say, embedding your single menu in all pages. This means that if you have many pages with the same menu then with SSI you can make changes in a single menu which will appear in all the pages.

Checking SSI On Your Server
SSI tags are parsed server-side, not by the user's browser. This means that SSI must be set up on your server for them to work. To test whether SSI is set up on your server place the following code in an HTML page:



Then try to run this page on the server. If SSI is enabled the current date and time on the server will be displayed. If this does not work try renaming the page extension to .shtml instead of .html or .htm. Many servers require this for SSI to work. If neither of these work, check the source code of your page. If the SSI tag is still there there is a problem. E-mail the system administrator and ask him if SSI is enabled.
If SSI is not enabled on your server then you can put your page on some other servers like for example Hypermart and angelfire.com

Let's Do It!
I will just give you a practical example and hope you understand it. Look at the following code, that is what we call a server side INCLUDES tag.



Now go ahead and download the following zip file. It contains 3 files which you have to unzip and then follow the instructions below.

ssi test

After downloading them upload them to your server and put them in THE SAME directory.

Note the file extension of the first file: ssi_test.shtml. This tells the browser that it is a includes page so it should be parsed. Note also that in .shtml page we NEVER use HTML tags like <HTML>, <BODY> etc. Only the part you want to parse (in our case a menu with 7 links) must be there.

Now experiment with the .shtml file and it will appear in both ssi_test2.html and ssi_test3.html. Add a link, change the color etc and see how it works. You will be amazed!

Note that the files must be in the same directory. Otherwise you have to use:



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Akmal Khan Sapay
Multimedia Editor
Safis Web

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