The following
answers were provided by various members of the GNWDA, after one
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Q:
I was once told about "include" pages (as my friend
called them). You can set up some HTML code on one page that is
"included" on another webpage. Seems like a good alternative
to copy/paste, especially if you need to change it often. I know
that you can use JavaScript from another file, but how do you
do this "include" thing? ~
Russ
"Server-Side
Includes" (SSI) are great for putting menus or a Table of
Contents onto webpages. Every time you add a new page that needs
to have a link on the menu, you don't need to add the link to
it on every webpage throughout your site. Just add it once to
the menu; the menu is a separate webpage or txt file that is "included"
or called upon by those webpages.
Here's an
example of how it works:
- Create
a menu on a webpage, and name it menu.htm
- Open any
webpage where you want the menu to appear (let's say it's index.html),
and type this code into the position on the page where it should
appear:
<!--# include virtual="menu.htm"
-->
- Save the
page as index.shtml -- the "s" you just added to "html"
tells the server that there's an SSI to watch for and implement.
Another good
use of SSI is a header or footer that gets repeated on every webpage.
These includes would contain recurring information such as text
links, contact information, copyright information, etc.
With that
introduction to SSI, let's see what tips the GNWDA members have
provided.
From Ken:
Our server allows a little trick called the "X-bit Hack",
but the Apache is actually set up to do that. This allows you
to make an .html file and CHMOD it so that it's executable, and
you can put as much SSI as you want in it, while the keeping the
filename .html instead of .shtml.
Q:
How can I figure out if I must save it as .shtml?
From Kathie:
It depends on what kind of setup your host server is running.
You will need to check directly with them as to what you need
to do in order to use SSI.
From Lynn:
To find out if you can use the SSI on your site, there's
an easy test to load on your page as either and .html or .shtml.
You can run it as: www.yoursite.com/dayname.html (or .shtml).
<HTML>
<TITLE>Test File</TITLE>
<!--#config timefmt="%A" --> <!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL"
-->
</HTML>
When you view
the page, you should see the day's name. If you can, you can use
includes.
From Kim:
My include looks like this:
<?include("http://www.domainname.net/menu.php");?>
Now,
SSI is a little different, as you have to use .shtml for the extension
in some cases.
From Terry:
Includes can be any type of file. If you put the html code for
the menu (or header or whatever) into a .txt file instead of an
.htm file, you can leave out the <html><title><head><body>
tags, since you don't need them twice (once on the main page,
and once on the include page).
From Kim:
Also, you can include includes WITHIN other includes! As
far as speed, includes make your pages load faster.
From Bonni:
SSI renders the page on the spot, taking the information in the
file that you specify as an include and
putting it into the page when the page is loaded. For this reason,
it is still accessible to those with older browsers or non-graphical
browsers, or with text-reading software such as used by the blind.
The server does all the work, and it doesn't matter what the browser
is, because the server renders all the includes as the page loads.
And
for this reason, you need to be a little bit careful about what
you put in an include and how many you use. It can slow down a
page considerably if you have a lot of SSI or very large hunks
of material to be rendered.
And since
the source is just like normal HTML, all of those text links will
be picked up and spidered by the search engine.
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