What do I require to use SSI on my site? How do I tell if SSI is enabled?
Your host server must have SSI parsing supported on its servers. Some free hosting sites may provide this service, most paid hosting sites do provide it. Check the HELP or FAQ area of your host or send them a quick e-mail if they have a support line.
You can also do a small test yourself to see if SSI is active. Follow these steps :
1. Create a new html document, name it "test.shtml" and enter this for its coding :
<html>
<head>
<title>SSI Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<!--#echo var="DATE_LOCAL" -->
</body>
</html> |
You may want to do an actual "copy and paste" on the above code block. Spacing and correctness is essential (and quite important too). More on spacing is covered under SSI Basics. First we want to find out if it works ...
Remember to use the "s" in the file name extension. It is an important factor on most servers. I'll explain this more after the test...
2. Upload the page to your online area and view it. If you see the current date displayed, then you have SSI available. You may read on and enjoy the rest of the SSI tutorial pages. If you are staring at a blank test page, the rest of this tutorial section isn't going to be much help.
Now about that "s" in the extension part... This stands for Server. It tells the host server that the current page is using a special function that requires its attention. Some host servers do not need the extra letter, but others do require it and it doesn't hurt to have it on there anyways. Plus it kinda looks cool to have something different showing than the old "html" extension :)
This may be a pain in the [blank] but any current pages you plan to use SSI on should be renamed to the new extension of "shtml". After that, using SSI will be much easier. Any files being called by an SSI command may have a regular extension of htm, html, or shtml.
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Article by David Stanley. Visit his site http://www.htmlite.com. Reprinted with permission.
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