There are probably two main ways you currently update your
site. The first, and most important, is adding new content. Whether you
are updating a calendar, adding a new page, or putting in a photo of a
new product, you are enhancing the value of your site for your visitors.
The second, and more time-consuming changes are those that
are made to every page of your site. These might include copyright
dates, contact information, the date and time, or navigation links. If
you have a large site, changing just your company phone number on every
page can be a time-intensive, boring job.
Modern web development tools such as Macromedia's Dreamweaver
offer a template feature that allows your web designer to change one
section of a single page (say the contact info) and have the software
automatically change all the pages that were made from that template.
Those changed pages are still on the designer's computer, however, and
must be uploaded to your server one page at a time. Depending on the
number and size of the pages, and the speed of your designer's modem,
updating a site this way can take awhile.
A simpler and faster method uses something called Server Side
Includes (SSI). We'll use the example of updating your contact
information, which is currently found at the bottom of every page of
your site.
Here's How It's Done
Your designer originally creates a new page that only contains
your contact information. This page is saved as a regular HTML page.
Next, the designer decides where on each page of your site to
place the contact info. In that spot, instead of typing in your
address, phone number and email, he places a single line of code that
might look something like < !--#include
virtual="../includes/newsSSI.html"-->.
This code tells the server to take whatever is on the SSI page and place it in this location.
Each page is then saved with the .shtml suffix instead of the
plain .html ending. For instance, the URL of your home page might be www.yourcompany.com/index.shtml.
This tells the server that hosts your web site that this page has a
Server Side Include in it which must be dealt with before the page is
sent back to the visitor. Every time this page is called, the server
will check the SSI page and load its content into the designated area
of the web page.
How This Saves Time
Once the system is in place, updating every page of a large
site is a two-step operation. The SSI page is changed (perhaps the
phone number) and that one page is uploaded to the server. That's it!
Now every page with a dot shtml ending will show the change instantly,
without the entire site having to be uploaded to the server.
I use this on my site every time I add a new article. At the
top of each page is a pointer to my SSI page. On that page it just
says, "This week's article is..." with the article name and a link to
it. Every time I add a new article to the site I just change the title
and link on the SSI page and upload it to the server. Instantly, every
page on the site has the new article name and link.
Probably the most common use of SSI is to automatically post
the current date and time. Just insert the code < !--#echo
var="DATE_LOCAL" --> where you want the date and time to appear and
the server will take care of the rest.
Conclusion
If you have a relatively small site, you probably don't need to
use SSIs, but as your site grows, these little snippets of code can
save your designer a considerable amount of time, which should save you
a corresponding amount of money.
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