how many ssi's equal best use

[royalelephant]

Is there a rule of thumb relating the number of includes (ssi) on one html page to the speed/efficent delivery of the page to the user's browser? I use about four ssi's on my pages at the moment: page header, footer, left column naviagtion, right column ads.

[quotations]

I have used four and six in the past but most of my current designs use seven. I am working on a new system design concept that will require somewhere between nine and twelve, depending on the page contents.

[royalelephant]

hmm... so if you're actually going to use more ssi's you don't think there'd be a decline in delivery times, search engine indexing, etc.? Do you use the ssi's in the head tag for anything special like js files, etc.?

[jatar_k]

decline in delivery times

That definitely depends. If you nest includes (include a file in a file that has been included) you can have page load issues. As far as having 4 includes on the page, I don't see this as being a problem. As with everything you need to test and if loading is an issue the number of includes/size of included files should be something that you look at as a possibility.

search engine indexing

No, unless you slow down your page so much it times out. SSI is executed Server Side so it happens before the page is ever served to the spider/bot.

Do you use the ssi's in the head tag for anything special like js files

You can use them anywhere you want/need to. Html is only what is sent in response to a request. How the page is built/managed before it is sent out is entirely up to you. ;)