Web Site Maintenance Made Easy
Anyone who has maintained a web site with many pages for an
extended period of time knows the nightmare of having to edit a
word or date that recurs on each page, such as copyright
information. Having to edit every single page can be very
time-consuming and tedious and often gets avoided for as long as
possible (usually too long). But it doesn't have to be that way.
By using simple Server Side Includes (SSI), you can streamline
and simplify the maintenance of your site.
SSI can be used to accomplish a variety of things on your web
site including running CGI scripts and posting the results on
the web page, posting the current time and date on the page,
posting the date of the last update, etc. However, I will not
get into the technical details of how SSI works or the more
advanced functions. In this article, I'll discuss the simplest
use of SSI, the "Include" command. Before you can implement this
SSI strategy, make sure you know whether your web site host
allows the use of SSI. If it doesn't, find a host that does.
The "Include" command allows you to create a text file with your
common information, then place a directive in your HTML file
that "points" to the text file. When you view the web page, the
server places the contents of the text file in where the
directive is in the HTML file. You can use this trick for
anything that recurs on each page of your website. For instance,
you can put a header and footer on each page. The header and
footer would be contained in text files called "header.txt" and
"footer.txt". These files would contain the html that recurs on
each page, such as text links, contact information, copyright
information, etc. In place of this html on each page, you would
place these directives:
Now, whenever anyone views the pages containing those
directives, the server will place the contents of the text files
in the appropriate place and the viewer will see the header and
footer. Whenever a change is needed within the header or footer,
only ONE file needs to be edited, the text file. All of the
pages using that file will be "automatically" updated. Changing
the copyright date or address or phone number on every page of
your web site will now take only 30 seconds because only one
file has to be edited!
The easiest way to do this is to create a web page with
everything you'd like to have on it. Those parts that will recur
on every other page are where you will use SSI. All you have to
do is "cut & paste" all of the html that will be used on each
page, pasting it into a text file. Where you "cut" the html,
replace it with the directive, such as:
Do the same thing for the footer, if needed. Save the HTML files
using SSI with the extension ".shtml". Also, depending on how
your server is set up with your host, you may have to make sure
the text file is in the same directory as the .shtml file.
This also makes the initial design and development of web sites
go much smoother. You can now have a "template" for each page
using the header and footer directive, then simply add the
content in between for each page.
I guarantee that this little trick will save you hours and hours
of tedious work. As I stated at the beginning, if you've been
through these "simple" edits before, you will need very little
convincing!