[thelist] When to use SSI for your website

[John Bedard]

Generally I like to use them for things like footer information and such, but once I created an entire site using SSIs.

It goes something like this (keep in mind that I know nothing of CMSes and CF, and minuscule amounts of Perl and javascript, so a more dynamic solution was not possible, and certainly wouldn't have been as cheap): 

There are three main subdirectories in the site, css, textonly and content. All three have exactly the same files structure.

Any file in the content directory contains strictly content (text, html tags, etc.).
Any file in the css directory contains three include statements:
     "include the css header"
     "include the content in the matching directory under /content"
     "include the css footer"

Any file in the textonly directory contains three include statements:
     "include the textonly header"
     "include the content in the matching directory under /content"
     "include the textonly footer"

A browser detect in the home directory sends users to the appropriate version. The cutoff is Netscape or IE 4. This way the site content is accessible to any browser, but there is only one source of content for version control. Yes, it does take a lot of cpu resources since every page is being constructed server-side, but the Client has a pretty beefy server. Yes adding a page does require the creation of three files, and its not for the total newbie, but I haven't run into any training problems yet. And like I said, its cheap to set up.

FWIW,

John 
P.S. Here is the site (the client has been changing the site quite a bit since the launch last November, but the underlying structure is still in place) http://www.discoveringmontana.com 

>>> krr at ix.netcom.com 09/03/01 01:13PM >>>
I was reading thru the threads on SSI and the one thing
I haven't seen is a recommendation on when to use them.

I am currently working thru Coldfusion, But this isn't for 
everyone because of the expense involved.

So my question  is when should I use SSI for a website?
Why would I choose it over other tools? Should I use
SSI in some places in place of Coldfusion?

I am try to put some type of perspective together on 
when I should use SSI.

Any insight would be appreciated

Thank You
Kevin