Editing Server Side Includes (section)

{{short description|Interpreted server-side scripting language}}
'''Server Side Includes''' ('''SSI''') is a simple interpreted [[server-side scripting]] language used almost exclusively for the [[World Wide Web]]. It is most useful for including the contents of one or more files into a web page on a [[web server]] (see below), using its <code>#include</code> directive. This could commonly be a common piece of code throughout a site, such as a page header, a page footer and a navigation menu. SSI also contains control directives for conditional features and directives for calling external programs. It is supported by [[Apache HTTP Server|Apache]], [[LiteSpeed Web Server|LiteSpeed]], [[nginx]], [[Internet Information Services|IIS]] as well as [[W3C]]'s Jigsaw.<ref name=jig>{{cite web |title=SSI Commands |url=https://www.w3.org/Jigsaw/Doc/User/SSI.html |website=W3C |access-date=24 March 2019}}</ref> It has its roots in [[NCSA HTTPd]].<ref name="ncsa-ssi"/>

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 [[Filename extension|extension]], by default <code>.shtml</code>, <code>.stm</code>, <code>.shtm</code>, or, if the server is configured to allow this, set the execution bit of the file.<ref>{{cite web|title=Configuring your server to permit SSI|url=http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/howto/ssi.html#configuring|website=Apache Tutorial: Introduction to Server Side Includes|publisher=The Apache Software Foundation|access-date=24 June 2015}}</ref>