Knowledgebase: SSI
How
to use SSI?
The simplest example of server-parsed HTML is to have a file "foo.shtml"
containing this text
Line one<br>
<!--#exec cgi="mycgi.cgi" --><br>
Line three
And then have a file "mycgi.cgi" that contains, on Unix:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
print "Content-Type: text/html\n\n";
print "Line Two\n";
And when you access "foo.shtml", it will output:
Line one
Line two
Line three
If your @include directive is <!--#exec cgi="..." -->,
then the cgi program you run must output a standard CGI header (Content-type:
text/html)
Any file named foo.shtml will be parsed automatically by Apache on our
servers.
Do not put any spaces before the '#' character in your @include directives;
if you have "<!-- #exec" instead of "<!--#exec",
the line will be ignored.
Server-side @includes in "custom trailers" will not work, since
custom trailers are appended to the output of your web pages after all
other processing has been done on them. Any server-side @includes that
you put into your custom trailers will be sent directly to the browser
without being parsed.
More Help for using SSI can be found at:
http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/docs/tutorials/@includes.html
What
guidelines should I follow with SSI?
A couple of important points you need to follow for SSI to work on your
domain.
1 - The web page that adds the SSI instruction to @include another page
or program MUST end with .shtml or .sht rather than .html or .htm.
2 - The URL to the page you want to insert must be relative to the current
web page rather than a full URL.
The SSI feature on your domain is limited to what is known as a "exec
cgi command". This simply means that you can insert into any page
the ability to execute any cgi program. The format for a Server Side @include
is:
One quick observation... do you notice how this SSI instruction uses a
*relative* URL (/cgi-bin/....) instead of a FULL URL? This is very important
to keep in mind when using SSI.
For example, let's say we want to @include a counter program (that has
the name, counter.cgi) on our home page, called normally index.html. Remember!
Because we want to add a SSI instruction in our home page, it must end
with .shtml or .sht. In this case, we would name it index.shtml.
What
is a good SSI test program?
A simple SSI program to test if SSIs are set up to work on someone's domain
or server:
<HTML>
<Head><Title>I was modified</Title></Head>
<Body>
<H1>I was modified</H1>
<P>I was last modified on
<!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED" -->
</P>
</Body>
</HMTL>
Save this as something like test.shtml in problemdomain.com-www and call
it from a browser. If LAST_MODIFIED is replaced by the file creation date
and time, SSIs work.
Source: "Server Side @includes" by Reuven M. Lerner (Linux Journal,
June 1998).
What
SSI is not allowed?
SSI that is not allowed: EXEC CMD
This is for security reasons and there are no exceptions.
Can
I modify my .htaccess file so I can have SSI in a file ending with .html
or .shtml?
This is highly discouraged as it will cause your site to run extremely
slow. If you need this contact support for help.
What
is the correct path to use SSI on the Burningbulb serversl?
T he path will always be relative to the URL location, not the server
path. Therefore it should always be something like: /cgi-bin/test.cgi
and not: /home/username/domainname-www/cgi-bin/test.cgi
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