Server Side Includes

Want an easier way to change your layout, but can't use PHP because your server doesn't support it? Then here's your answer!

Server side includes (SSI) use .shtml and .txt extensions instead of .php, but they do the same thing a PHP include would. So how do you do it? Same way you would make a PHP include. First, you start off with your full layout code. This one's obviously very simple, but it's just for a sample.

<html>
<head><title>Untitled Page</title></head>
<style type="text/css">
body{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
background-color: #fff;
font-family: verdana;
font-size: 8pt;
color: #000; }
</style>
<body>

Web Content Here

</body>
</html>

Okay, so now you have your basic code, we have to split it up in to three files: top.txt, index.shtml, and bottom.txt. Top and bottom are pretty self-explanatory, but here's what they would look like for the sample code above:

<html>
<head><title>Untitled Page</title></head>
<style type="text/css">
body{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
background-color: #fff;
font-family: verdana;
font-size: 8pt;
color: #000; }
</style>
<body>

Save this file as top.txt and then leave it alone for now...

</body>
</html>

Then save this file as bottom.txt and leave it alone for now, too.

So all that's left is "Web Content Here", right? But for the includes to work, we couldn't leave index.shtml with just the content. What you do now is include two lines of code; one at the top of index.shtml to call "top.txt" in to action, and one at the end of the code to call "bottom.txt" to work. So here's what that will look like:

Web Content Here

Finally, save this as index.shtml and then your done!

Remember..

When you create a new page for your site, the extension should be .shtml and every page needs to have  at the top of the code and  at the bottom of the code. Now, instead of having to go to every .html page to change CSS/ layout of your page, you can simply edit top.txt and bottom.txt to change the look of every page that calls those files. Enjoy!