Question

I am creating a website for a client. Most pages are static other than a simple contact form. It is being hosted on a Fedora server running Apache.

All pages have the same header and footer. I want to use some sort of templating for maintainability. What do you recommend for me to use and why? Also, some quick examples would not hurt.

I am mainly a Python developer (Django) but I do have experience in PHP. I’m assuming PHP would be the way to go since it is pretty easy to get up and going on Apache.

My criteria:

1. Very lightweight
2. Easy to install (either via yum or a quick download)
3. Pretty URLs (i.e., no index.php?page=about)

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Server Side Includes are about as basic as you can get and are perfect for a mostly static site:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/howto/ssi.html

That link will show you how to config the server for it and then you’d use a syntax such as:

<!--#include virtual="/footer.html" -->

If the server is running PHP, you can also use PHP includes:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.include.php