Unix Server Side Includes

Server Side Include (SSI) commands are executed by the server as it parses your HTML file. Server side includes have a variety of uses including displaying the date and time and adding a common signature to each of your web pages.

HTML files containing SSI must be named with the extension .shtml. SSI commands are easy to add to your HTML, but you must follow the syntax exactly:

<!--#command cmd_argument="argument_value" -->

A summary of the most popular SSI commands available on our servers are listed below. Please note that whilst it is possible to execute a CGI program from a server side include, this feature is disabled on our systems due to the security issues it presents.

The Echo Command
The echo command can be used to display the content of the server side environment variables listed below.

For example, to include the current date and time you would place the following code into your HTML document:

<!--#echo var="Date_Local" -->

The Fsize Command
The fsize command includes the size of a file, this might be helpful if you were to include a thumbnail image and want to display the actual file size of the original image.

<!--#fsize file="image.gif" -->

The Include Command
This command can be used to include a signature file or company logo within an HTML document. The added document or image will appear as if it were part of the original document.

<!--#include file="any.htm" -->