Server side Include Pages(SSI)

[thiruvasagamani]

A SSI, server side include page is dependent upon software on your server to call each of your include pages into the page when requested by a web browser.

  An example of a server side include technique is to use PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) to provide your page file - complete with any include pages within it - to the browser.

  When viewing a page using PHP server side include pages to provide some of the components of the page the end result displayed to the user is identical to the same page with the component hard-coded on it (rather than provided by the common include file).  In fact, if you view the source of the page even the html code displayed would suggest that the component being provided by the include page is actually hard coded on the page.

For example - a common website might have four main regions or components to its design.  The header, navigation, body and a footer.

   In most cases, the header, navigation and footer are identical from page to page - with only the body content changing, dependent upon the given topic of the page.  Thus, it would make sense to utilize include pages for each component that is to remain the same from page to page.

  By using include pages there is only one instance of the code for each of these components.  This ensures consistency across each page, and makes it much faster to make a change to any of these regions (as you only have to make the change to the one include file). There are numerous advantages though in using include pages rather than frames, including some advantages in achieving rankings in the search engines as well as some aesthetic and compatibility considerations in using frames.