Your First Look At Using SSI

An adult webmaster resource...

Written by Tom from Tom's Newbie Booster

If you're new here (and it is a newbie board!) you'll probably be wondering what SSI is and how it can help you. SSI stands for Server Side Include which is not a very descriptive or helpful name in itself. I'm not gonna go into what it means as it's not gonna help us understand how to use it today. All I want to get across now is that this thing's name is SSI, and it's got lots of uses for adult webmasters.

What's it do?

SSI does something simple but something which can be used in many different ways. To explain what SSI does, let's imagine that you had a website and it had 10 pages to it. Every day, you wanted to add a new link to each of those webpages. This would involve you opening up each of those 10 webpages and typing or pasting in the same bit of text to each one. That's where SSI steps in.

With SSI, you would make the 10 pages and put a special hidden bit of text on there which 'included' a text file from your webspace. This text file would contain the list of links for example (in HTML format). Now all you have to do is to edit that ONE file each day and it will be included on all of those pages. Cool huh?

Adult webmaster uses of SSI

Well, I've given myself a task here. How do I put all the uses of SSI in a few lines? Here are some of the ways that adult webmasters are using SSI:

- To build link popularity by having the same set of updated links on many pages.
- Inserting text links and adverts which can be altered later by altering one text file.
- To insert the money board of alternative niche links to the base of each site.
- On any area of the site where some links are likely to need updating.
- To insert exit consoles and blur consoles so that they are easy to change later on.

Enough talking - let's start DOING!

OK here's a simple tutorial which will get you SSI'ing.

1) Create one text file in notepad or a similar editor and paste this in there.

<A HREF=http://www.hotbot.com>;Hotbot</A>
<BR>
<A HREF=http://www.google.com>;Google</A>

2) Save this file as searchengines.txt

3) Now, create 4 webpages and on these webpages, have the following:

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE></TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY>

</BODY>
</HTML>

4) Save them as:

01.shtml
02.shtml
03.shtml
04.shtml

NOTE: SHTML??? Yeah, shtml is the same as html but it is more likely to work with SSI. Some servers are set up (or can be altered easily) to run SSI on html pages but for now, use this format).

5) It's time to insert our list of search engines on this page! Add the following line in the body tags of each shtml page somewhere:



This is the SSI line which calls the text file searchengines.txt that we just created onto each page.

6) Upload all 5 files to a folder on your webspace somewhere. You should be able to see something like this:

http://www.tomsnewbiebooster.com/using_ssi/01.shtml through 01.shtml

View the source and you'll see that the html from the text file was inserted seamlessly.

OK, let's change something here...

7) Open up searchengines.txt and add this line to the BASE of that code:

<BR>
<A HREF=http://www.altavista.com>;Altavista</A>

Then upload that file and refresh one of the shtml pages. If Altavista is now showing on all 4 pages - you've got the basics of SSI. Lemme know if you get stuck anywhere!

Moving on...

I think it's up to every adult webmaster out there to decide how they can put this powerful tool to it's best use on their servers and in their work. But remember that implementing it now could save you a hell of a lot of work down the line. And be aware of when you're updating many pages just to add or change the same bit of code. Chances are that SSI can be used here to save YOU a lot of time - that stuff that no adult webmaster can have too much of.

Enjoy SSI!

TOM ^"^

ICQ 12616560
Email tom@tomsnewbiebooster.com

Enter TOM'S NEWBIE BOOSTER

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