Easy Site Maintenance with Server Side Includes
By Jim Philips

A well-designed web site doesn't just have
intuitive navigation, streaming video, and all
the latest Flash bells and whistles.

It's also easy to maintain.

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If you've ever done a site redesign for a medium
to large web site you know what a headache it is
to recode every page.

Adding even a simple navigation link to 50+ pages
is tedious.

And error prone!

But there is a technology that allows you to keep
common page elements like your logo or navigation
bar in separate HTML files.

You make changes to a single file and you have
updated your entire site!

I'm talking about Server Side Includes (SSI),
which allow you literally to include one HTML
document inside another.

1: You place an SSI command, called a directive,
on a page where you want to insert the text.

2: When a page is requested, the server replaces
the SSI directive with the file and sends the
output to the browser.

You can use SSI to include your logo, your left,
top and bottom navigation bars, a copyright
notice or any other information you want to
appear on every page of your site.

Very cool, and good design as well.

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Let's take a look at a simple example to add a
copyright notice to your web pages.

1.) First, create the copyright notice in a file
called "copyright.html".

<p>Copyright 2003 MyCompany, Inc.</p>

2.) Now add the following line at the bottom of
every page where you want the copyright notice to
appear:

<!--#include file="copyright.html" -->

That's it!

Now if you want to update the copyright with the
current year, or add an email address, you only
have to update one file.

A very efficient use of your very valuable time!

How can you add SSI to your existing website?

The easiest way is to cut and paste the
information that appears on all of your pages and
save it in separate files.

You can use "html" or "txt" as the file extension,
but remember to use descriptive names like
"topnavbar" or "copyright" so you will remember
what each file contains when it is time for the
next global update.

Add the appropriate include command on each page
and you're done.

If your includes are in the root directory, the
code looks like this:

<!--#include virtual="topnavbar.html" -->

If you decide to store your includes in another
directory you will need to add the path name
before the file name:

<!--#include virtual="/includes/topnavbar.html" -->

Before including SSI, check with your web host to be sure it
supports
SSI (most do).

Some web hosts may require that you use .shtml or .shtm as
a file extension, but not all do.

If your web host doesn't support SSI you might
want to find one that does.

It's that valuable.

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If you want to learn more, there are lots of good
SSI tutorials on the web. Here are a few of my
favorites:

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

Apache-
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/ssi.html

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

Implementing SSI on an existing site takes time
but once you've done it you'll see the rewards of
easier site maintenance immediately.

And it is something you'll want to remember for
future designs as well.

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