SSI - Server Side Includes Tutorial!

Getting a lot of pages on your site now and hating to have to change every one individually every time you want to add a new link or some sitewide info? Well your troubles are over, welcome to the world of SSI ( Server Side Includes ).

Many people use Frames to get around this problem but, if you want to get listed in the Search Engines, I would recommend you stay away from Frames. Supposedly some of the SE spiders are able to find their way through framed sites these days, but I wouldn't take the risk, as there is another option, which does the job you want to do just as well, namely SSI's or Server Side Includes.

Take a look at this page, on it, the table on the right hand side, the table at the bottom of the page and the table at the top with the logo are all SSI files, which are included on just about every page on this site.

If I want to change or add a link or any information to the whole site, I simply add it to one of the SSI files, upload it to the server and all pages on the site are updated.

When the SE spiders call for a page to index the server includes the SSI files and with them all my ( text ) links to other pages on the site, which they can ( and do ) follow to access those pages.

I tend to set up my index and other doorway pages with layers as a .html file to maximise SE optimisation and so don't bother with the .htaccess file which needs to be used if all your pages are .shtml.

I have some very highly ranked pages on Google and other SE's using this system, so I can guarantee it works with the SE's.

The one possible draw back that I have found, is that the process can slow down the page loading on the visitors browser, but frankly in my experience the difference is very minimal.

I do not intend to write a tutorial as this area is not my speciality and there is a perfectly good tutorial on SSI at http://www.bignosebird.com/ssi.shtml. In the into to this tutorial, the writer mentions checking with your hosting company to see if your server will handle SSI. WMS clients needn't worry about, our servers do handle SSI.

If you want more info you can do a search SSI Tutorials on Google, there's lots of em.