I have authored several Web sites (let's call them site1.com,
site2.com...) that make liberal use of SSI includes for things like
headers, etc. Most pages contain the following:

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

Now, I am trying to set up a temp copy of those sites to serve as
staging areas when I make changes, so I don't play around with the live
sites. They are stored under my server root at (let's call it
myuser.com), in the Temp directory:

/ [myuser.com server root]
Temp
site1
includes
images
etc.
site2
includes
images
etc.

Problem: pages in each staging site now try to include files from the
wrong directory. For example, let's take the live page:

site.com/index.html

whose include resolves to

site.com/includes/header.html



The staging version of that page, located at

myuser.com/Temp/site1/index.html

will want to include /includes/header.html which resolves to

myuser.com/includes/header.html

I want it to resolve to

myuser.com/Temp/site1/includes/header.html



If these were files requested by users' browsers, I could use the
Apache rewrite engine to point the requests to the right directory.
However, because the problem lies with server-side includes, I can't do
that, right? (If I can, then I screwed up because it didn't seem to
work.)

So, is there a way in Apache for the server to modify the URL of
#included files, so that I can keep the HTML code on the staging sites
identical to that found on the live sites?

P.S. I can't simply set up a link to /Temp/site1/includes/ from
/includes , as each staging site has its own /includes directory --
linking the root's /includes to one staging site's correct directory
would not solve the problem for the remaining staging sites.

Thanks for your .

Typo: I wrote

> For example, let's take the live page:
>
> site.com/index.html
>
> whose include resolves to
>
> site.com/includes/header.html

I obviously meant site1.com, not site.com.

Typo: I wrote

> For example, let's take the live page:
>
> site.com/index.html
>
> whose include resolves to
>
> site.com/includes/header.html

I obviously meant site1.com, not site.com.

Typo: I wrote

> For example, let's take the live page:
>
> site.com/index.html
>
> whose include resolves to
>
> site.com/includes/header.html

I obviously meant site1.com, not site.com.

blaq@blaqzone.com wrote:
> [chop - too much to read]

Of course you can run SSI includes through Aliases
and Rewriterules, or your operating system's
equivalents.

It's a technique that is used as the basis for
entire publishing systems: the combination of
SSI and rewrite can pull in different stories,
adverts, etc into a page.

--
Nick Kew

blaq@blaqzone.com wrote:
> [chop - too much to read]

Of course you can run SSI includes through Aliases
and Rewriterules, or your operating system's
equivalents.

It's a technique that is used as the basis for
entire publishing systems: the combination of
SSI and rewrite can pull in different stories,
adverts, etc into a page.

--
Nick Kew

blaq@blaqzone.com wrote:
> [chop - too much to read]

Of course you can run SSI includes through Aliases
and Rewriterules, or your operating system's
equivalents.

It's a technique that is used as the basis for
entire publishing systems: the combination of
SSI and rewrite can pull in different stories,
adverts, etc into a page.

--
Nick Kew

blaq@blaqzone.com wrote:
> If these were files requested by users' browsers, I could use the
> Apache rewrite engine to point the requests to the right directory.
> However, because the problem lies with server-side includes, I can't do
> that, right? (If I can, then I screwed up because it didn't seem to
> work.)

Note that prior to apache 2.1 mod_rewrite used in per-dir context (i.e.
..htaccess files, <directory>-containers etc.) does not act in sub requests.

But a rule in per-server context (httpd.conf, if you're using virtual
hosts, inside of that <virtualhost...>-container would work. But you
must not use the NS-flag, of course.

So it should look like

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/includes/header\.html$ /Temp/site1/includes/header.html [L]


--
Robert

blaq@blaqzone.com wrote:
> If these were files requested by users' browsers, I could use the
> Apache rewrite engine to point the requests to the right directory.
> However, because the problem lies with server-side includes, I can't do
> that, right? (If I can, then I screwed up because it didn't seem to
> work.)

Note that prior to apache 2.1 mod_rewrite used in per-dir context (i.e.
..htaccess files, <directory>-containers etc.) does not act in sub requests.

But a rule in per-server context (httpd.conf, if you're using virtual
hosts, inside of that <virtualhost...>-container would work. But you
must not use the NS-flag, of course.

So it should look like

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/includes/header\.html$ /Temp/site1/includes/header.html [L]


--
Robert