SSI on OS X Mountain Lion Server 10.8.3

We currently have a strong dependency on SSI at work and were recently offered a nicely-specc’d Xserve that was being retired for use as an in-house preview server.

I’ve got my doubts about SSI, but we have literally thousands of templates that require it for includes. It also functions in subtly different ways to PHP, and we’re not about to embark on any bulk conversions of our front-end templates into haml, jade, or whatever else is in vogue – the legacy cost is too great.

Apologia out of the way, we are using Mountain Lion’s in-built Apache 2.2 server after a trigger-happy rm -rf on my part killed a painstakingly crafted homebrew version implemented by a colleague.

Config locations

If you are using the in-built server, you are using virtual hosts.

This simple truth is not well documented online, so if you are spending time in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf you will not succeed. The default port 80 (non-SSL) vhost file is at /Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/sites/0000_any_80_.conf.

Enabling SSI parsing

There’s ample info online about enabling mod_include, but what isn’t mentioned is that you need a handler specified in the virtualhost config.

AddHandler server-parsed .html is all it takes, but this won’t necessarily have effect within your directive unless you tell it to.

An age old tale of computers doing exactly what you tell them. And a wasted Friday afternoon!