Server Side Includes (SSI) is a simple server-side language, which lets you incorporate text from a given source inside a website. In the most popular case, the text from a single file is integrated in a second one, giving a website the sense that it is dynamic. As an example, if your site comprises of ten pages, 5 of them can have the content of any kind of file, for example horoscope.txt. Any time you modify this text file, the updated content will appear on all five webpages, which shall permit you to bring up to date your site much easier than if you had to update an element of all 5 web pages. Server Side Includes is occasionally used to incorporate the output of simple commands, scripts or functions as well - a hit counter that is displayed on the site, the current time and date or the customer's IP address. Any webpage that uses SSI will need to have a particular extension - .shtml.

Server Side Includes in Shared Web Hosting

Server Side Includes is featured on our modern cloud hosting system, so no matter the Linux shared web hosting you choose, you'll be able to make use of this feature making your website much more dynamic. All you need to do is to make a file called .htaccess in the home folder for the domain name or subdomain where you would like to use SSI and add a number of lines of code inside it. You simply won't require any kind of coding skills however, as you're able simply copy the needed code from the help section, or our technical support can help you activate SSI for a specific site. You just have to customize the extension of any html file that will use Server Side Includes to .shtml and make sure that all links to those pages on the site are correct.

Server Side Includes in Semi-dedicated Hosting

It shall not take you more than a moment to activate Server Side Includes when you've got a semi-dedicated server plan through us. When you decide to activate this feature, you will need to set up an .htaccess file in the main folder for the domain or subdomain where you would like SSI to be enabled. In this file, you have to copy some code, which you can find in the FAQ article we have dedicated to SSI. You can get the latter within the Help area of your Hosting Control Panel, so you do not need any prior knowledge of this kind of matters. The only 2 things you should take care of are renaming all of the webpages that will use Server Side Includes from .html to .shtml and changing all the links in your website, to make sure they point to the updated files.