Server Side Includes (SSI) is a simple interpreted server-side scripting language used almost exclusively for the web.
The most frequent use of SSI is to include the contents of one or more files into a web page on a web server. For example, a web page containing a daily quote could include the quote by placing the following code into the file of the web page:
<!--#include virtual="../quote.txt" -->
With one change of the quote.txt file, all pages including the file will display the latest daily quote. The inclusion is not limited to files. In this very example, on a server that can run fortune, the output of it, a randomly selected quote, can also be included.
Server Side Includes are useful for including a common piece of code throughout a site, such as a page header, a page footer and a navigation menu. Conditional navigation menus can be conditionally included using control directives.
In order for a web server to recognize an SSI-enabled HTML file and therefore carry out these instructions, either the filename should end with a special extension, by default .shtml, .stm, .shtm, or, if server is configured to allow this, set the execution bit of the file.
As a simple programming language, SSI support only one type: text. Its control flow is rather simple, choice is supported, but loops are not natively supported and can only be done by recursion using include or using HTTP redirect. The simple design of the language makes it easier to learn and use than most server-side scripting languages, while complicated server-side processing is often done with one of the more feature-rich programming languages.
Apache and lighttpd are the major two web servers that support this language.
Host-ed.net allows SSI for paid hosting plans - Personal and Business.
