134 Chapter 6 6.2 Warp is an independent record label, founded in Sheffield in 1989, notable for electronic music. Their dynamic website almost certainly uses SSI, but it cannot be discerned just by looking at the source ­ on the server, all the changing content will have been called in SSI (Server Side Includes) We start with a technique that will not make your site look any different, but will make your job a great deal easier, particularly if the site is frequently being updated manually. Imagine that you have created a website with a large menu running down the left-hand column. The site now contains many hundreds of pages, but the client wishes to add another item to the menu, and remove one. What do you do? In the days of framesets, this was easy ­ you just amended the frame containing the menu and the whole website was updated. With an HTML/CSS website, however, you would have to make each change individually to each and every page. And what about the copyright notice at the bottom of the page in the footer? It says (but the SSI file remains as menu.html). You can, however, fool the server into thinking a .html file is a .shtml file using .htaccess ­ sites such as http://www.andreas.com/faq-ssi. html tell you how. Obviously it is best to develop an SSI site from scratch, but it is a relatively simple matter to convert a small site, and it only has to be done once. A disadvantage is that you cannot preview your website on your computer: it will only come together once uploaded by FTP to the server and viewed in a browser. Believe it or not, you have just done some programming.