Using HTML Server Side Includes (SSI)

Our Web server allows server-side includes, a feature that can help you customize your pages. When you use this feature, certain tags will be replaced by some other content.

All server-side include (SSI) tags have this form:

<!--#command-->

SSI commands include:

• The echo tag allows you to insert various items, such as the URI of the page, its last modification time, the current date and time, and many more.
• The include tag allows you to insert any file into your page.
• The exec tag allows you to execute a program that generates output to be inserted into your page.

Requirements for SSI execution

For performance reasons, the server does not automatically process server-side includes. You must do one of these things to cause them to be expanded:

• To enable SSI processing for all the files in a directory (and in any of its subdirectories at any depth), use an ordinary text editor to create a file named “.htaccess” in that directory, and place in that file a line that looks exactly like this:

  AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .html
  

  If you want SSI processing for files with other extensions such as “.htm”, repeat this line for each such extension.
• Set the user execute permission bit on your page. For example, if the page is in a file named gerbils.html, this Unix command would add the correct permission:

  chmod u+x gerbils.html
  

  For more information on Unix file permissions, see `Controlling access to your files'.
• Give your page a name ending in “.shtml” instead of “.html”.

John Shipman, john@nmt.edu Last updated: 2009/01/16 22:51:41 UT URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/html/ssi.html