Please take a moment to view the lower and side parts of this page. In the actual source code shtml file, everything after

You will now have a directory entry in the document directory and your include should work just fine!

<!--#include file="mailform1.txt" -->

View mailform1.txt Please note that some browsers may show formatted output. If this occurs please select VIEW-SOURCE from your browser's menu bar.

This SSI directive allows us to easily update the navigation bar and fine print statement on any page that includes the directive. To change any page, we need only edit the mailform1.txt file. That is a timesaver!

Including Files Outside Your Document Directory
For security reasons, many servers are configured not to allow you to copy in files located outside your webspace, or DocumentRoot. You can either copy the file to your document directory, or do this little trick:

The unix ln (link) command allows you to create a entry in a directory that points to a real file located elsewhere on the computer. If you have a file called myfile.txt located in /usr/me/mybookfiles/source you could do this:

cd public_html (or wherever your webpage is located)

ln -s /usr/me/mybookfiles/source/myfile.txt myfile.txt

If Your Files are Under Your DocumentRoot

If the file you want to include in your page is located some where under your DocumentRoot directory (the one with your main index page), you can use the virtual type of include:

<!--#include virtual="/file.txt" -->

   or

<!--#include virtual="/somedir/file.txt" -->