[thelist] When to use SSI for your website

[Shirley Kaiser, SKDesigns]

At 12:13 PM 09/03/2001, you wrote:
>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

Kevin,

I don't work with Cold Fusion so I can't answer any of the questions 
related to that. I think it may have some code of its own that does 
something similar, just as Dreamweaver does, but I don't know specifics. (I 
do know that if you do changes to a site with Dreamweaver's equivalent that 
you have to upload all the pages again rather than just one file if you go 
the SSI route. I have no clue about Cold Fusion, though.)

I can answer your questions about SSI uses, though.

One of the features I especially like is being able to put any content that 
is consistent across your pages into one 'include' file. Then you just 
change the one file and upload it and your entire site is changed. I 
typically use it for site navigation, top mast, bottom footer and copyright 
information.... anything that is repetitive like this.

Other benefits are things like showing the last modified date (and time if 
you wish), breadcrumb navigation trails, URLs for a page, etc.

It's great and saves more hours than I could begin to count with only 
needing to change one file for an entire site.

When you combine this with external style sheets and external JavaScript, 
it really speeds up the efficiency of maintaining a site and making any 
changes.

By the way, I'm a designer/developer, not a programmer, so this all may 
seem like Mickey Mouse stuff to the programmers. :-)  At any rate, it's an 
easy and time-efficient way of doing the above.

There could be some other good uses for it, too, which I'd also love to hear.

Warmly,
Shirley

--
Shirley E. Kaiser, M.A.
SKDesigns  mailto:skaiser1 at skdesigns.com
Website Development  http://www.skdesigns.com/
Pianist, Composer  http://www.shirleykaiser.com/
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