Server Side Includes (SSI) is a simple server-side language, which lets you include text from a specific source within a web page. In the most common scenario, the text from one file is incorporated in a different one, providing a website the feeling that it's dynamic. For example, in case your site has 10 web pages, 5 of them can contain the content of any kind of file, for example horoscope.txt. If you change this text file, the new content will appear on all five pages, which shall enable you to bring up to date your site faster and easier than if you had to modify part of all five pages. Server Side Includes is in some cases employed to contain the output of simple commands, scripts or functions as well - a hit counter that's shown on the site, the present time and date or the customer's IP address. Every web page that uses SSI will need to have a particular extension - .shtml.

Server Side Includes in Cloud Web Hosting

As our custom cloud hosting system has Server Side Includes on a global level, you are able to implement this function with all of the cloud web hosting plans we have and add dynamic content to your websites with just a few mouse clicks. SSI can be activated for each specific domain name or subdomain by putting an .htaccess file in the site folder with a few lines of code. Certainly, you don't have to turn into a programmer for that because the necessary code can be copied from the Help article that we have about Server Side Includes. If you wish to use this feature for your website, it is important to rename your website files from .html to .shtml and you have to double-check if all links on your site point to the updated names.

Server Side Includes in Semi-dedicated Servers

Server Side Includes may be activated without any problem with every single semi-dedicated server package that we provide and the full process will take you just one minute and just several mouse clicks. You can activate SSI by making a blank .htaccess file within a domain or subdomain root folder using the File Manager tool in the Hosting Control Panel or perhaps an FTP app of your choosing, then incorporating a few lines of code, that you will be able to copy from the SSI article in our comprehensive Knowledgebase. The one thing remaining then will be to double-check if all pages that shall use Server Side Includes are renamed from .html to .shtml and also to alter backlinks to different web pages on your site, in order to reflect the changes in the file extensions.