[thelist] can someone build a 100-page website with only HTML/CSS skill?

Tue Nov 11 18:58:49 CST 2008

Martin Burns wrote:
> Of course, Apache-native SSIs are lightning fast, and deprecated
> according to whom?
>
> http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/ssi.html
>
> Cheers
> Martin
> (who has built entire sites with Apache SSIs, Perl SSIs and thousand  
> page sites with Front Page SSIs)
>   
Hi Martin. The whole discussion of SSI/PHP starts with my experiment to
use SSI to include navigation bar and hit a problem not being able to
highlight current navigation level easily. See my article:
http://www.zhangweiwu.name/081111.html

But after I read your link where lead to the HOWTO, I found SSI /could/
be used to include highlighted navigation easily! The reason I got it
wrong is because I am food into thinking "SSI = static inclusion":

a working example that solves highlight current navigation bar problem:

------------------ about_us/publications/journals.html

...
<body>
<!--#include virtual="primary.navbar" -->
<!--#include virtual="secondary.navibar" -->
...

------------------ primary.navbar

<ul class="primary navbar">

<!--#if expr="$document_uri = /^\/|news_and_events|\//"-->|
  <li class="selected">|
|<!--#else --> <li> <!--#endif-->
|  <a href="news_and_events">News and Events</a></li>

<!--#if expr="$document_uri = /^\/major_initiatives||\//"-->|||
  <li class="selected">
<!--#else --> <li> <!--#endif-->
|  <a href="major_initiatives">Major Initiatives</a></li>

<!--#if expr="$document_uri = /^\/about_us||\//"-->||
|  <li class="selected">
<!--#else --> <li> <!--#endif-->
|  <a href="about_us">About Us</a></li>

</ul>

secondary.navbar can be built in the similar method. This method require
much less maintaince to understand then the method in
http://www.zhangweiwu.name/081111.html

Question is since we went this far it's close to introducing a
programming language already. But yet I think such logic in SSL is
easier than PHP because SSI is still not a programming language, the
above is only a conditional text operation.

Thanks again for giving me the howto! otherwise I almost overlooked the
conditional text part of SSI. I could search the howto out from google
easily, but without you saying so I probably forgot to have a more
detailed reading of it again.