SSI Basic tutorial

1st of all make sure ur host supports SSI, usually they do, but make sure, it never hurts. next thing SSI stands for Server Side Includes, very important to understand 'Server Side' - surfers will never notice that u have SSI-powered pages (btw SE spiders will not notice that too)

how SSi works? u insert SSI commands in ur html file, just simple text command, we will cover 'em later and server software will parse it (please note that some hosting companies r configurating their server software to pass only some special extensions, usual .shtml - that's faster, 'cuz plain .html's r not parsed, but is better only at high trafficed sites) and send _ready_ page to surfer

what we can do with SSI? rather a lot.

1st of all we can run cgi scripts inside our page, that's awesome feature for counters, pictures of the days, even recips tables.

usually exec feature is used <!--#exec cmd="/cgi-bin/somefolder/somescript.cgi" -->, but i strongly recommend to use virtual SSI command instead: <!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/somefolder/somescript.cgi?someparameter=somevalue" --> 'cuz we can send parameters to our scripts and that rocks, trust me :=) i have all AVS scripts called by virtual directive, when AVS is changing script it takes me 20 seconds to make changes on hunderds pages :)

we can insert external files - very easy to use and nice feature <!--#include file="/somefolder/somefile.txt" -->. great for putting recip tables, SE interlinking, navigation bars, etc. this feature is working extremely fast, so u can use it rather often without slowing ur server a lot

we will not dig deep in SSI, but browser specific content generation using extended SSI is my weakness

as we know all browsers r a bit different, some features r unique for IE, some for Netscape and using eSSI we can always be sure that surfer has the best possible variant for his browser.

why it's better than using javascript? well, 1st of all 10% of surfers has javascript disabled and ur browser specific javascript code will be useless. 2nd pages generated by eSSI for particular browser r always smaller, u can save a lot of bandwidth, really a lot if u have loads of html, not graphics surely

how this works? i'll use a simple example:

i hope it's very clear, we r checking ${HTTP_USER_AGENT} (the variable that server is giving us filling with browser type) comparing with WebTV, then MSIE and finally Mozilla (note that MSIE also has Mozilla in description, so we r checking it for Netscape). after that we can use $browser variable as we like, for example: <marquee> some text goes here, it will be marquee in IE, blink in Netscape and bold in any other browser </marquee>

as u can see it's rather simple and will be always sure that ur page is smallest possible and working for that browser, but note that pages with high traffic and a number of SSI instructions can slow down ur server (CPUs r getting more powerful each month, but don't forget about this anyway)

SSI is rather powerful thing, after this tutorial we will go deeper, try all this features on ur host, don't forget "ppl should think and computers - work", let 'em work for u

oh yeah, just imagine that u have loads of AOL surfers and two pay-per-click sponsors - one for uniques and one for raws. u can send AOL surfer as raw (usually they all comes from a group of AOL proxies) and others as uniques, this will increase u revenues a lot. hehe, just an example what u can do with SSI :)

enjoy we r in XXI century, use hi-tech to gain more $$$ :-)
good luck,
aleck