[WEB4LIB] Re: Use of ssi's--CORRECTION

[Thomas Dowling]

At 09:02 AM 2/10/2002, Nancy Sosna Bohm wrote:
>I woke up this morning and thought first thing that y'all will NOT be able
>to see the code after the server has processed the ssi's.
>First, to recap what I am asking:
>Is it insanity to to recode 25 pages of links to & info about our hundreds
>of
>databases using ssi's to "hide" and "show" the appropriate links when
>students are on or off campus (depending on IP range)?


I don't think it's insanity to use SSI for this, though I think other 
server-side technologies will give you more flexibility in the 
future.  You'll know better than we can whether this is likely to tax your 
server, but SSI is usually a pretty lightweight service.  (I'm speaking as 
an Apache person; if WebSTAR can't do SSI as easily, that's something else 
to consider.)

That said, I think your approach has inefficiencies built in that will make 
your server work much harder than necessary.    It asks the "What's your 
IP?" question over and over, once per database.  It seems like you could 
ask the question once at the top to set a variable and then just refer to 
that variable, or use it once to do an include of either the on-campus 
content or the off-campus content.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu