Contact us
Online Manual
Please see notice on manual index page, click here.
For support on demand visit our new support channel, TQ Support!
<< Chapter 10 - Server Side Includes (SSI)
What are server side includes (SSI)?
(Last modified Aug 26, 2002 )
SSI is an Apache web server feature that can easily allow dynamic content to be included in otherwise flat HTML pages.
Used properly, the SSI feature can help make your pages more responsive and can even help make maintaining your site an easier task.
Put simply, SSI is sort of like using your HTML server as a cut and paste editor. Here is basically what happens when your server handles a request for an SSI document. If you use SSI, you must rename the page so that it ends in .shtml so that the server knows to parse the page for SSI commands.
The server reads the document and parses (techie word for chops up and looks for special instructions) it for directives.
It then follows the instructions that it finds and merges their results into the data sent to the client browser, creating a finished document.
SSI also seems to be one of the better kept secrets around. In any web related book, they seem to get about 1 page for every 200 pages on CGI and FORMS. I recomend the Apache documentation as a good, if sometimes cryptic starting point for learning SSI basics.
