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Server Side Includes and Your Template

Download the notes from the "Using Server Side Includes for the Right Navigation" session.

Server Side Includes

According to Dreamweaver Help, this is the definition of a server side include (SSI).

A server-side include is a file that the server incorporates into your document when a browser requests your document from the server. When a visitor’s browser requests the document containing the include instruction, your server processes the include instruction and creates a new document in which the include instruction is replaced by the contents of the included file. The server then sends this new document to the visitor’s browser.

A server side include is incorporated into a document via an Include statement. A SSI is a fragment of an HTML document, and can contain most HTML tags (H1, H2, …, P, lists, images etc.) except it must not contain any of the following tags: <HTML>, <HEAD>, <BODY> or any of the corresponding closing tags. Because the SSI is included at the time the page is loaded for browsing, we recommend the SSI reside on the same server.

Using a Server Side Include in Your Template

You may wish to change the content of the right hand navigation panel on a regular basis, but you may not want to change it in the template, and then go through the process of updating and uploading all the files based on that template that contain the right navigation. This would be an ideal place to use an SSI.

To do this, create a fragment of an HTML document that contains the material that you want in the right navigation. You can include headings, lists, text, etc. Save that file on your local Dreamweaver site in a file called perhaps rightnav.html. Now edit your Dreamweaver template. Select and delete the content of the right navigation. It might be safest to do this in Code view.

SSI Replace

Now delete the selected lines and replace them with the SSI. You do this by selecting from the Dreamweaver menu Insert ->Server Side Include. Choose your server side include file and select the option "Relative to: Site root".

Depending on your version of Dreamweaver, in Code view, your document should now look similiar to:

<div id="secondnav">
<!--#include file="../ssis/rtnav.html" -->
</div>

or

<div id="secondnav">
<?php virtual ('/ssi/rtnav.html'); ?>
</div>

Remember that you must upload this SSI file to the server.

 

Editing a Server Side Include in Contribute

The server side include file can be edited in Contribute by browsing to the file in the Contribute browser, and then clicking Edit. To browse to a server side include, you will need to type the URL into the Contribute browser. For example, if my website is http://mywebsite.uwaterloo.ca and my SSI is called rtnav.html and is located in a folder called ssis I would browse to http://www.mysite.uwaterloo.ca/ssis/rtnav.html and then click Edit.

Will Server Side Includes Work on Your Web Server?

The Include tag is embedded in a comment, and scanning all comments to look for Includes can put an extra strain on a web server. Therefore, some web servers do not scan for server side includes by default. If an SSI does not seem to work on your web server, check with your system administrator to find out what you need to do to make them work. For example, some web servers require that all files containing server side includes have a file extension of .shtml rather than .html. Other servers may require that you place a file called .htaccess at the top level of your web site. That .htaccess file must contain a line similar to the following. AddHandler server-parsed htm html. As mentioned above, please check with your system administrator.

Note: Server side includes are permitted by default on the "info" web server.