Server side includes

[CoolBee]

Anyone got experience of these and potential pitfalls?

Situation: am updating a website for someone - basically it's a number of pages on a two column format - main column and a standard sidebar containing standard 'news'. Up to now, I have been copying and pasting it on to each page every time it's updated, but there must be a better way.

In the 'olden days' I would have used frames. As it is, I never built her original pages, but just do 'updating' for her so it's a bit of patchwork now!

I was hoping I could put the standard bit in the CSS file but apparently not.

I have read that I can use something called 'server side includes' so basically I could just put the 'news' code in a file on the server, then use appropriate bit of 'include' code in the html files.

I don't want to use javascript because I dont know how to even start with that.

We are thinking of redoing her site in WordPress but we are a month behind due to the revolution and other stuff so I just want to do something quickly (and I will have to learn how to do it in WordPress).

[CoolBee]

Ooh I like this as long as there's no problems I can't forsee!
Tested it on a page using Firefox, IE8 and SRWareIron browsers and working fine.
The only problem really is that it only works if you have loaded the files to be included onto a server so you can't try it on the computer before uploading it.
I wonder if it would work if I put XAMP back on (which I lost when the 'puter crashed about 3 months ago!)