[[!meta  title="Server side includes"]]

When I can't use a templating system (e.g. [IkiWiki][] or [CherryPy][]
+ [Jinja2][]), I tend to use [server side includes][SSI] to handle all
the boilerplate header and footer information that is constant across
a website.

Content-carrying `.shtml` files look something like

    <!--#include virtual="/~wking/shared/header.shtml"-->

    <h1>Some title</h1>
    <p>Bla bla bla.</p>

    <!--#include virtual="/~wking/shared/footer.shtml"-->

The boilerplate files (e.g. [[header.shtml]] and [[footer.shtml]]) are
included by the server whenever it serves a page.  This is probably
wildly inefficient from the server's point of view, but it's very
convenient for me :p.  It is more efficient if your publishing tool
(e.g. [IkiWiki][]) can include this boilerplate once at
*publish-time*, rather than having Apache include it again for every
page request.

[IkiWiki]: http://ikiwiki.info/
[CherryPy]: http://www.cherrypy.org/
[Jinja2]: http://jinja.pocoo.org/2/
[SSI]: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/ssi.html

[[!tag tags/tools]]
[[!tag tags/web]]