Server Side Includes (SSI) is a simple server-side language, which enables you to include text from a specified source in a website. In the most typical situation, the text from a file is integrated in a second one, giving a site the feeling that it is dynamic. For example, if your website is made of ten webpages, 5 of them can include the content of any kind of file, such as horoscope.txt. Once you modify this text file, the modified content will appear on all five pages, which shall let you bring up to date your site faster and easier than if you had to modify part of all five web pages. Server Side Includes is in some cases employed to include the output of simple commands, scripts or functions as well - a hit counter that is shown on the website, the present date and time or the visitor's IP address. Every webpage that utilizes SSI will need to have a unique extension - .shtml.

Server Side Includes in Shared Web Hosting

It will be easy to use Server Side Includes with all shared web hosting plans that we offer you and enable it independently for every single domain name or subdomain inside of your hosting account. You can do this by using an .htaccess file, which needs to be positiioned in the folder in which you wish to use SSI and you have to type in a few lines of code in that file. You can see the code in our Knowledgebase section, so you're able to simply copy and paste it, since you don't need any programming capabilities to take advantage of all of the features that our solutions incorporate. In case you have currently built your website and you wish to use Server Side Includes later on, you need to ensure that you rename the files from .html to .shtml and fix the links on the website, or else SSI is not going to work.

Server Side Includes in Semi-dedicated Hosting

It shall not take you more than a minute to enable Server Side Includes when you've got a semi-dedicated server package with us. When you choose to enable this function, you must set up an .htaccess file in the main folder for the domain or subdomain in which you need SSI to be enabled. In that file, you have to copy some code, that you can get in the FAQ article that we have devoted to SSI. You'll find the latter in the Help area of your Hosting Control Panel, so you don't need any prior knowledge of such things. The only two things you should deal with are renaming all webpages that shall employ Server Side Includes from .html to .shtml and bringing up-to-date all of the links in your site, in order that they lead to the renamed files.