Using SSI's to Ease Site Maintenance
Before building a site, every webmaster has to make a decision on what layout method to use. Most seem to go with
either a frame or a table-based layout, the latter being more popular in these days. While both of these have their
advantages and disadvantages, a frame-based site is usually easier to update. If you happen to have a 200-page site
with the same navigation on every page, adding one link to the navigation menu might require you to edit all of the
pages if the design is built with tables. On the other hand, if the site uses frames, you can get by with changing
just a few files and save yourself a lot of time. No, I'm not trying to convince you to switch to frames. I myself
use tables and am not going to change my layout. The only problem is that over time, sites tend to grow. It just
might be possible to edit around 20 pages when you want to change something, but when we start talking 50 or over
one hundred, it just doesn't seem like a good idea. Unless you are prepared to spend hours trying to keep your
navigation menu up to date, you have to come up with a better way of doing things. SSI's to the Rescue
If your host supports Server Side Includes and is running Apache, you can use this article to make your table
design as easy to maintain as it would be if you were using frames. The best part is that visitors won't even
notice that you have changed anything. After the new system is in place, they will see exactly the same design and
HTML code as before, but you will be saved from hours of monotonous work. Server Side Includes, or SSI's, can be
used in many ways. With them you can execute CGI programs, display the current date & time on your page and do
plenty of other things as well. In this article, we use them for including external files to your HTML. The idea is
to create a separate file from your navigation menu and use SSI's to point to it, requiring you to merely edit one
file when you wish to change the navigation. Should you have some knowledge of Server Side Includes, you might be a
little worried. Doesn't this require that you rename all your pages from ".html" to ".shtml" if you want it to
work? That would take a lot of time, break the links that are pointing to your site and you might have to resubmit
your pages to the search engines. Is it reasonable to go through all that trouble to make maintaining your site a
little easier? Fortunately, there's no need to start renaming any files. You can simply instruct the server to
treat your ".html" files as ".shtml" files and execute all SSI instructions in them. This can be done with a ".htaccess"
file. If you already have one, you'll have to edit it. If you don't, open up a text editor, such as Notepad, and
paste the following lines into a blank file. Be sure to replace .html with .htm, if you're using that extension.
Options Includes AddType text/html .html AddHandler server-parsed .html Save the file in "All files" mode and name
it ".htaccess". Include the quotes so that Notepad won't decide to name the file ".htaccess.txt". Changing Your
Pages
After the .htaccess file has been created, you'll have to make changes to your HTML files. To be on the safe side,
take backups of them before doing anything. Then, paste the HTML you use to generate the menu from one of your
pages into a blank file. Save the file as "navig.html" for example. Next, remove the navigation menu from all of
your pages. Replace it with the following line: <!--#include file="navig.html" --> What you're doing is telling the
server to insert the code from "navig.html" into the page. This will be done before the page is sent to the user
who has requested it, so anyone visiting your site will merely see a normal HTML file. When you have finished
editing your files, connect to your host via FTP and upload the ".htaccess" file, the "navig.html" file and the new
versions of your content pages. Then it is time for the true test, trying to visit your site and see what happens.
If you have done everything correctly, you should see that your pages look the same as before. However, if you make
a simple change to the "navig.html" file, it will apply to the navigation menu of every page. What used to take
minutes or even hours can now be done in seconds, giving you the possibility to use that valuable time to do
something other than changing the HTML code of each page separately.
Author Details:
Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free information about search engines, directories
and other promotion methods. His site can be found at http://www.apromotionguide.com/
Google must surrender its users' personal information to Viacom (VNU Net via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News)
Google has been ordered to disclose personal information, including viewing habits and internet addresses to Viacom, in the latest phase of the ongoing legal battle between the two companies. Google must surrender its users' personal information to Viacom (Computing.co.uk)
Janie Davies, Computing , Friday 4 July 2008 at 10:21:00 A US court has ruled that Google must provide Viacom with details of users who have watched YouTube videos Google has been ordered to disclose personal information, including viewing habits and internet addresses to Viacom, in the latest phase of the ongoing legal battle between the two companies.... Google must surrender its users' personal information to Viacom (vnunet.com)
Janie Davies, Information World Review , Friday 4 July 2008 at 11:52:00 A US court has ruled that Google must provide Viacom with details of users who have watched YouTube videos Google has been ordered to disclose personal information, including viewing habits and internet addresses to Viacom, in the latest phase of the ongoing legal battle between the two companies.... ...
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