Server Side Includes (SSI) is a basic server-side language, which enables you to include text from a specified source inside a web page. In the most common scenario, the text from one file is included in another, providing a site the feeling that it is dynamic. As an example, in case your site has 10 pages, 5 of them can easily have the content of any kind of file, for example horoscope.txt. If you ever modify this text file, the new content is going to appear on all five webpages, which shall permit you to update your website much easier than if you had to update a part of all five web pages. Server Side Includes is in some cases used to include the output of simple commands, scripts or functions as well - a hit counter that is displayed on the site, the present time and date or the visitor's IP address. Every web page that uses SSI will need to have a special extension - .shtml.

Server Side Includes in Shared Web Hosting

Server Side Includes is featured on our progressive cloud hosting system, so no matter the shared web hosting service which you choose, it's possible to utilize this feature making your site more dynamic. Everything you must do is going to be set up a file called .htaccess in the main folder for the domain name or subdomain in which you want to use SSI and include a number of lines of code inside. You simply won't require any coding skills though, as you can just copy the necessary code from our help section, or our tech support team can help you enable SSI for any given website. You need to simply modify the extension of any html file which will use Server Side Includes to .shtml and make certain that all of the links to those pages on the website are accurate.

Server Side Includes in Semi-dedicated Servers

It will not take you more than a moment to activate Server Side Includes if you have a semi-dedicated server plan through us. When you choose to activate this function, you need to create an .htaccess file in the root folder for the domain or subdomain in which you want SSI to be enabled. In that file, you need to copy some code, which you'll find in the FAQ article we have devoted to SSI. You can get the latter inside the Help section of your Hosting Control Panel, so you do not require any prior knowledge of these types of things. The only 2 things you should take care of are renaming all of the webpages that shall utilize Server Side Includes from .html to .shtml and replacing all the links on your site, so that they point to the updated files.