PHP Makes Site Updates A LOT Easier
If you manage your own web site or manage it for others and have been using SSI for the longest time, I challenge you to try PHP. It’s a lot more flexible and powerful than SSI. Here are some examples how.
With SSI – all your included files needs to be on the same server (or domain) while if you used PHP, you can pull files from any server and any domain (provided you have the right to republish of course)
PHP allows you to embed content within content. For example, if you have say header.html as the included file and inside the header.html you want to include another file e.g. external.html. You can’t do that with SSI.
SSI is an apache server feature which means if you run a Windows server, depending how your host setup the server, chances are this won’t work. PHP works on almost any platform as long as your host has PHP installed. So moving across different platforms is much easier.
You can get creative with PHP without resorting to Javascripts e.g. Monday display this file, Tuesday another and so on. Once you switch, you can also add a whole bunch of content like RSS content for example, a lot easier.
Using PHP is really not as difficult as people think. In fact, the code used is a lot like SSI. In SSI, you’d put something like
In PHP, you’d use
< ? include("myfile.htm") ?>
Give it a try.
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I have been using PHP in some places on my sites for awhile now. I highly reccommend it!
I have been using PHP in some places on my sites for awhile now. I highly reccommend it!
Hey Tiffany, I didn’t know that. Glad it’s working out for you.
Hey Tiffany, I didn’t know that. Glad it’s working out for you.
I have a loooong way to go. I don’t know SSI or PHP 🙂
I have a loooong way to go. I don’t know SSI or PHP 🙂
Hey Carrie,
Maybe the need hasn’t really come up yet 🙂 but if anyone is interested to at least try. Here’s one very simple way but good way to start.
If you own a lot of sites that you want to keep in a family, link to each on the footer. You can create a standard footer for all your sites and only update in one place.
First, you create a simple page that looks something like this:
Link1 | Link2 | Link2Copyright message
Save it. It doesn’t even have to be .html, many PHP coders like to use .inc
Enter this code at the bottom of all your pages on all the sites. I know you use XsitePro so you’d just go to the footer and paste this code in:
Save all your pages in .php this can also be easily done in XsitePro
And that’s it. Now I know some people are a bit paranoid about having a .php ending to the pages – I personally do not think it’ll affect SEO, but not being an SEO expert, I’ll give you a ‘fix’ to satisfy that.
You only have to do this one. Login to your web host’s control panel, locate the .htaccess file and add a line like this:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html
Hey Carrie,
Maybe the need hasn’t really come up yet 🙂 but if anyone is interested to at least try. Here’s one very simple way but good way to start.
If you own a lot of sites that you want to keep in a family, link to each on the footer. You can create a standard footer for all your sites and only update in one place.
First, you create a simple page that looks something like this:
Link1 | Link2 | Link2
Copyright message
Save it. It doesn’t even have to be .html, many PHP coders like to use .inc
Enter this code at the bottom of all your pages on all the sites. I know you use XsitePro so you’d just go to the footer and paste this code in:
< ? include("http://www.site.com/filename.inc") ?>
Save all your pages in .php this can also be easily done in XsitePro
And that’s it. Now I know some people are a bit paranoid about having a .php ending to the pages – I personally do not think it’ll affect SEO, but not being an SEO expert, I’ll give you a ‘fix’ to satisfy that.
You only have to do this one. Login to your web host’s control panel, locate the .htaccess file and add a line like this:
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html