Server Side Includes (SSI) Not Working Under Windows Hosting

Issue

Server Side Includes (SSI) aren't working under a Windows hosting account and .shtml files don't appear to run.

Reason

Net24 does not support server side includes on Windows hosting accounts; there is a history of security problems with SSI on Windows.

Demand for SSI on Windows is usually low because customers requiring Windows hosting will predominantly be using ASP or ASP.NET server side scripting languages and customers will use the include functions of these languages.

For this reason we have chosen not to support SSI on windows and expose the servers to another attack vector.

Solution

The solution is to use ASP virtual includes such as the example below:

<!--#include virtual="/<virtual path>/<filename.ext>"-->

Rename the page extension to .asp as .shmtl will not run on the server.

If you must use server side includes and do not require any Windows hosting technologies such as asp and asp.net then contact us and we will move your account to a Unix hosting plan that does support SSI.