One of the main uses of Server side includes (or SSI) is the re-use of HTML common to a set of pages. The headers and footers of the all the pages in this SSI overview are the same and are kept in two files called head.shtml and foot.shtml. A third file called menu.shtml is used to include the menu that appears near the top of every page.
This has obvious maintenence advantages and saves typing the same HTML every time we create a new page. Should some new metadata scheme come into vogue, we would only nead to change one file to propogate this years fashion through-out our entire web site.
At the top and bottom of every page are SSI directives to include my header and footer files. The basic structure of these pages looks like this:
<!--#set var="title" value="Server Side Includes" -->
<!--#include virtual="head.shtml" -->
...
Main text of document goes here
...
<!--#include virtual="foot.shtml" -->
See the next page for an explanation of the first line of text in the above example.
An include file can include further files. For instance, my
head.shtml has an #include statement
to include the menu.shtml file.