A home-made SSI framework

yangyang · Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 23 Location: kavoir.com

I have written a petty SSI framework in my spare time, very simple but with the following functionalities in mind:

Specific meta information for each category and article:

1. Specific keywords independently for each category and article.
2. Specific description independently for each category and article.
3. Specific title independently for each category and article.

Note: Since all the meta information is self-contained within each category and article, wherever you move them in the hierarchy of your website, all the meta information is preserved and re-stacked when you access them from the new URI. Let's take title information for example, we have a hierarchy of,

kavoir.com
ã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œ=Reference
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=HTML Entities
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=page1.shtml <===Access it from your browser
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=page2.shtml
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=page3.shtml
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=CSS Colors
ã€€ï½œã€€ã€€ã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ã€€ã€€ï½œ=page1.shtml
ã€€ï½œã€€ã€€ã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ã€€ã€€ï½œ=page2.shtml
ã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œ=Tools
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=Color Scheme from Pics
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=Email Pics Generator
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œã€€ï½œ=Text Pics Generator
ã€€ï½œ
ã€€ï½œ=Bullshit
ã€€ã€€ã€€ï½œ
ã€€ã€€ã€€ï½œ=Devil Dic

page1.shtml's title should be "titleofpage1::HTML Entities::Reference::titleofkavoir.com" at first. After you move it to another category, say, CSS Colors, the title on your browser will automatically* change to "titleofpage1::CSS Colors::Reference::titleofkavoir.com" when you access it with the new URI. It's the same with keywords and description stacking.
And of course, you can choose to maintain an category or article whose meta information is totally at its own and not stacked with their fathers at all.

4. Each category has its own self-contained independent navbar, with navigation information of categories and articles directly under it.

Note: Just like the meta information, navigation is also re-stackable. Take the example above, before the move, the whole navigation on article page1.shtml looks like this,

=> [navigation of kavoir.com]
=> [navigation of category Reference]
=> [navigation of category HTML Entities]

After the move, the navigation on page1.shtml automatically changes to

=> [navigation of kavoir.com]
=> [navigation of category Reference]
=> [navigation of category CSS Colors]

Note: As you can move articles around the website hierarchy freely without worrying about the meta information and navigation, you can also move categories(and the whole structure within) the same way.

5. The skeleton.shtml in the framework deals with the skeleton of every page in the website, so it would be easy to make any global change.

6. Instead of using the skeleton.shtml, an article could as well resort to a combination of headsec.shtml + bodysec.shtml for skeleton, which is equal to skeleton.shtml. In this way, customized meta information(be it local css styles, scripts or meta tags) specific to this article can be easily added between the including of headsec.shtml and bodysec.shtml.

*Note: Actually not a total automation, you have to modify the nav info of the category into which page1.shtml is moved and that of the category from which page1.shtml is moved out. Other than that, things are automatically taken care of.

You can download the framework at: ssi2.zip

Remember, it has to be put in the DOCUMENT ROOT to work. It's a website framework, not a directory framework.

yangyang · Joined: 05 Oct 2006 Posts: 23 Location: kavoir.com

It's so simple that I didn't even bother to put it online. Now that we are here, complaining and rambling about SSI, I thought, why not. So this is it.

I use it for one of my other websites: econguru.com, and it worked pretty good with a small undertaking such as this. Or you may not want to bother implementing it, cause' you can easily write your own. Smile

Anyway, hit me! Cool