Wow, how long has it actually been. Bad, bad, bad !!! Ok let's get to brass tacks. SSI (Server Side Includes) can be such a great thing for large sites. There are several different kinds of SSI, but here tonight it will be the file includes used in ASP.

The great things about these includes are that you can take chuncks of HTML and create an .inc(short for include) file. These .inc files can be inserted into an .asp page which recreate that specific chunk of html. http://www.asp101.com/resources/frame_v_inc.asp can show you how its done with examples.

Now briefly I wanted to talk about the advantages of SSI. In an enterprise wide Web site there are certain areas of each page that are commonly duplicated for redundancy throughout the site. Such items could be a search function or the actual navigation area on each page. These items can be included as a SSI file and when changes need to be made globally, only the .inc files needs to be modified. Can you imagine changing 1400 pages of HTML without SSI or Content Management tool? SSI can help you do it fast.

Another great link for further information is located at http://www.learnasp.com/learn/inc.asp

More on SSI soon...