After working with content management managements for well quite awhile now, the thought of creating more than seven (more than five, less than ten) static pages for a client makes me cringe. Why? I am spoiled by using template driven solutions. With templateing, if I need to make a header change, I change it one place and I am done with it. With using static .html pages, I have to make the change to all the pages. I have grown very reliant on using find and replace, but then – because of the person I am – I have to go back and make sure everything looks right.
I am currently wrapping up a project where I was not able to use a content management system, PHP, or any sort of database. No, this is not 1998, this is present day. For decisions I will not get into, this was the situation, no getting around it. This web site has about 75 static pages and around the twentieth page I started to sweat when the client wanted a major layout change. After emailing someone technical in the department I found out they did allow the use of Server Side Includes (SSI) by way of the mod_include module in Apache. My life became much easier after this past weekend as I converted all the pages to be .shtml pages (needed for SSI). By using SSI, I was able to create common files (header, footer, side links, navigation) so any changes to the common elements, and I just need to touch one file instead of all 75 pages.
What you need to use SSI on the server end:
- Apache with mod_include
enabled - Apache configuration must have the proper AddType and AddHandlers set up:
AddType text/html .shtmlAddHandler server-parsed .shtml - Apache configuration must also have the directive set up for the appropriate directorys ():
Options +Includes
What you need to use SSI on the client/page end:
- Name all files you want to have SSI elements in them to include the .shtml extension so Apache knows to parse these files properly
- Use the following syntax when you want to include a file:
when you want to “inlcude” some common code such as a header or footer. (please see the mod_include documentation for all syntax)
Apache’s mod_includes also gives you the ability to include CGI files, show modification dates, date and time, the user name who last modified the file, etc. Lesson learned: if someone approaches you about creating a “simple” static web site, look into if SSI is an option!
[tags]Apache, mod_include, SSI[/tags]
