Web Hosting: Server Side Includes

Today’s topic includes Server Side Includes available on all Domains at Retail Shared Web Hosting plans.

What is a Server Side Include (SSI)?

Server Side Includes (SSI) is a piece of code placed in your HTML web page that the server evaluates when the page is being accessed.

SSI’s main use is to allow content from another page on your server to be added to your web page.

Where would I use a Server Side Include?

In most sites, the header or footer never changes and is common on all pages. A good idea to help with future maintenance of the site is to place the common code for the header and footer in seperate include files.

The reason to do that is if you want to change one thing in the header, you can simply change the One included header file instead of every single file on your site. If your site has 20+ pages that means you have to make changes to 20 different files instead of one included Header file every time a change in the header is needed to be made.

How do I use Server Side Includes with Domains at Retail’s Web Hosting?

Example:

<!–#include virtual=”/directory/file.html” –>

This directive tells the server to display the contents of /directory/file.html in that spot on the web page.

This frees up the daunting task of updating common site content on many different pages into one Server Side included file.

Reducing site maintenance so quick updates can be made are crucial, and Server Side Includes (SSI) can ease the pain of site maintenance.

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