SSI allows the server to insert data into documents that are requested by the browser. The server is usually configured so that these modifiable documents have the tag .shtml. (The server associates this file extension with the MIME type: text/x-server-parsed-html) |
SSI will slow down the performance of the server as it must be checking for .shtml tags and parsing those files. |
SSI also allows the execution of programs and so has some of the functionality of using CGI scripts. |
A .shtml file has regular html, plus it may have SSI entries of the form: |
<!--#command tag1=value1 tag2=value2 . . . --> |