[thelist] Advisablitity of SSI

John.Brooking at NA.SAPPI.COM John.Brooking at NA.SAPPI.COM
Wed Sep 17 07:45:45 CDT 2003


Hello, all,

   Well, you've got me sold on tableless layout with CSS, thanks to the
excellent links some of you pointed out last week. Now I have another
question.

   In your experiences, what are some guiding principles for deciding when
to use Server-Side Includes to include common sections over multiple pages?
As a programmer, it is very attractive to only maintain a common element
such as a navigation bar in just one location, but I don't see it used as
often as I would expect, especially in combination with CSS. (At least by
looking for the .shtml extension, which I know is not always required.) On
most of my sites, and even on subsites of larger ones, I can imagine having
all sections but the primary content area be included this way. On the other
hand, I know SSI is frowned on in some circles as placing more burden on the
web server. (But why - isn't it just another request like a graphic or
external CSS file? Or is there more to it than that?)

   I suppose this is only really an issue if you are manually coding and
maintaining a site. If you are using content management software, you can
just set up the common elements as part of a template, and if you change the
template, all pages change automatically, either because they are built
dynamically already, or maybe are rewritten when their dependencies change.

   Comments?

- John

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