DevShed: Getting More Out of Apache (part 1)

“As you might imagine, the ability to host multiple Web sites on a single server is an elegant – and
economical – solution to the problem of limited IP address range in the IPv4 protocol. It also allows Web
hosting services to “sub-host” multiple client domains on a single server, and developers to run multiple
Web sites on their development and test systems for simulation purposes.”

“… Very simply, server-side includes are sets of instructions which enable Web servers to display data
contained in server-side variables (server date and time, file currently in use, and so on). SSI also allows
you to include external text files in your HTML pages – this comes in handy when you need to add a
common header and footer to every HTML page.”
As you might imagine, the ability to host multiple Web sites on a single server is an elegant – and
economical – solution to the problem of limited IP address range in the IPv4 protocol. It also allows Web
hosting services to sub-host multiple client domains on a single server, and developers to run multiple
Web sites on their development and test systems for simulation purposes.