This page allows you to configure server parsed HTML on your server. You can
activate server parsed HTML for the entire server, or for just a part of it.
Normally, HTML is sent back to the client exactly as it is on the disk, with
no server intervention. However, sometimes you might find it useful to have
the server parse these files, and insert request-specific information or
files into the document. You can do this through server parsed HTML.
First you should choose whether you want to activate server parsed HTML or
not. You can also choose not to activate the exec tag. The
exec tag allows an HTML file to execute an arbitrary program on the server,
and you may want to deactivate it for security or performance reasons.
You should also choose a method for the server to determine which files
should be parsed, and which should not.
- The usual method is to use a filename extension of
.shtml
for server parsed HTML files. Sometimes you may not want to use a
different filename extension, though.
- The server can also only look at files with the UNIX file permissions
set such that the execute bit is on. This is often unreliable, though,
as sometimes documents have the execute bit set even though they are
not really executable.
- The server can also look at every HTML file on the server. This incurs
a large performance hit, though, since the server must now look at
every single HTML file it sends back from this directory. (If the
directory isn't that large, this may not be that much of a problem.)