How to Use SSI Includes

Using SSI Includes can help you save a lot of time in developing
your website. A simple code snippet like the one found here at
this page
http://www.tvcrazy.net/tvclassics/articles/ssi_include.htm can
be placed anywhere. The anything.htm, used here for an example
in the page above, can be used as a menu all across your entire
website. This allows you to change every menu on every page that
has this code by simply changing the anything.htm page.

In order to use an SSI Include you have to be using pages with a
.shtml extension, or you will have to set your apache handler to
parse the type of extension you used for your web pages. You can
ask your web host to do it for you, but it is really quite
simple. Just go to your control panel, and click on apache
handlers. You'll see two small boxes. The first will say
extension over the top. Type in .htm or .html for example. Now
type server-parsed in the second box. It's usually listed
underneath so you could just copy and paste the word in. Now
click add, and you are done. 

The code snippet should now work. You can add just about any
code to your page with this handy snippet. It saves a lot of
time if want to add a link across your site. Remember you can
name the anything.htm to any name. You can change images, links,
text, etc. all in one whack by using this method. It could save
you hours of labor if your web site is very large. This also a
great method for inserting RSS feeds or other data feeds from a
php page into an html page. 

Another method for those familiar with creating .htaccess files
is to create a .htaccess file and add this line "AddHandler
server-parsed .htm " without the quotes. Then place the file in
the main directory with your index page. I mention this because
if you've already created an .htaccess file for some reason in
your main directory then going through the control panel may
overwrite what you've already done.