| Use Server Side Includes To Ease Your Workload
I’m all for making things as easy as possible. The whole idea in
business, and life, is to work smarter not harder. When
designing websites, I not only want to create them with as
little effort as possible, but I also want to make maintaining
them easy.
One way to do this is with Server Side Includes (SSI). SSI’s are
an easy way to add or update content to one or more web pages on
a site. One way I use SSI’s is for the copyright on my pages. By
changing the year in one file, it changes the year on all of my
pages. I also use SSI’s for the links on my pages. If I decide
to add or remove a link, or rearrange them, I simply make the
changes in one file and my entire site is automatically updated.
As I said before, make it easy. Why should I go to each of the
80 plus pages on my site to change something when I can do the
same thing with one little file?
Another great thing about SSI’s is that you can’t see them on a
web page. If you, or anyone, view the contents of your page, the
SSI won’t show. Instead, you will only see the HTML put there by
the SSI.
Before you try to use SSI’s you need to check with your web host
to see if the server is set up for them. Most servers are. If
they say they are, then you need to do a little test. Create a
web page with the following HTML.
Testing SSI
Save this as an HTML file and upload it to your server. Now try
to open the page with your browser. If you see the current
weekday, like Monday, Tuesday, etc. then you can start using
SSI’s. If you don’t see anything, rename the file extension.
Instead of using HTML use SHTML. Some servers require the “S”
and others don’t.
Another thing you need to know is that you shouldn’t use the
SHTML extension on your Home or Index page. Spiders don’t like
it and won't be able to Index the page on their search engines.
Now that you know your server will let you use SSI’s, let’s
start saving time. The first thing you need to do is create a
text (.TXT) file that contains the information you want to
include. This can be graphics, text, links or anything else you
want to include. You will want to include the HTML that you
would normally put on a web page. Think of this text file as
something that will be pasted into your web page, since this is
exactly what will happen.
If you wanted to include a copyright on each page, then put this
into the text file
Copyright © 2004 Jeff Colburn
and save it as a text file. Let’s call it copyright.txt.
Now, create the web page where you want the copyright to go. In
the place where you want to see the copyright, put
then upload this web page to your server. When you go to this
page with your browser, you will see the copyright information
where you want it.
If the copyright doesn’t show up, recheck the above command. Be
sure the spacing and capitalization are correct.
I usually put these text files in my main folder with all the
SHTML files. Another option is to put all of the SSI text files
into their own folder. If you do that, then the command will
look like this
Replace the word “directory” with the name of the directory
where your text files are located.
Now you can use SSI’s to include anything you want on various
pages. And feel free to include as many SSI’s on a web page as
you want. I use up to five on some of my pages. The real secret
is to carefully plan out your site and its future growth. This
way you can include SSI’s as you create your site, instead of
adding them to your site after it’s completed.
So have fun with SSI’s, be creative and let your server do as
much of your work as possible.
About the author:
Do you need a website for your small business or yourself? Do
you need copy written for your website or business? I make
website design fast, easy and affordable. Go to my site NOW!
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