Website Updates are a SNAP With Server Side Includes

By Merle
Posted Thursday, June 24, 2004

If you ever had to make a change to your website that needed
to be carried onto every page, you know what a tedious job it
is.Well, have I got news for you. It doesn't have to be. Welcome
to the world of Server Side Includes, also known as SSI. The
best part about SSI is that it will make your life as a site
owner 'oh so sweet.' You're going to want to kiss me after I
give you the lowdown on this little beauty.

Let me give you an example. Let's say you have a site with over
50 pages and you need to add another link to your navigation
bar. Can you imagine how long it would take you to open each
page and update it? By putting your navigation bar into an
SSI file, you would only open up that one file and update that
-- and the change to your navigation bar will show up site
wide. See how simple that was? By editing one file you have
updated your entire site instantly.

The most common use of an include file is for your top
navigation, your bottom text navigation, copyright, logo or
any other piece of info needed to appear on all pages of
your site.

So how do you create an SSI file? Glad you asked!
An include file can be an HTML file or a simple text file.
It should be whatever HTML coding you need for that element of
your site, minus the or tags which should remain
on your individual pages.

An easy way to make them is to design your web page and cut
and paste the code you want into individual files and name
them things like topnavigation.htm or bottomnav.htm. By
giving them descriptive names, you'll know at a glance which
file is which when it comes time to perform those updates.

After creating the files you plan on using as your includes,
you'll need to open your web pages and insert a line of code
where you want the SSI information to show up in your documents.

The code looks like this:

If your includes are located at the root level on your
web server your path would look like this:

That's it. Pretty simple, really. After you get the hang of it
you'll wish you would have learned about them years ago. They
really do make global updating a snap.

Here are a couple of good sites to learn more about SSI:

Big Nose Bird-
(http://www.bignosebird.com/ssi.shtml)

CGI Resource-
(http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Documentation/Server_Side_Includes/)

New Breed Software
(http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/unix/www/ssi/)

Web Reference
(http://www.webreference.com/programming/ssi/intro/)

Before you start implementing SSI you need to ask your web host
if they support them (most do), and also if they will need to
be named with any special extensions. Some servers may require
you to give them specific extensions like .asp (if it's NT) or
.shtml (for many Unix servers). Although the majority won't, it's
always better to ask first. Better safe then sorry.

By designing your website with server side includes you'll save
yourself a ton of headaches when it comes time to updating your
site. SSI is a Webmaster's best friend, so I suggest you spend
some time getting acquainted.

About the Author
Merle (http://www.EzineAdAuction.com)
"Where some of the BEST Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made"
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