The Easy Way to Add Trailers to Files

Suppose you want to add a standard trailer to all your pages -- for example, your name with a link to send you email, a copyright notice with a link to your legal information page, and the last date the page was modified.

There is a simpler way to do this than using server-parsed HTML. You can make the server add your trailer to the end of all pages automatically. This saves time two ways:

• You don't have to add the <!--#include file="..."--> tag at the end of all your pages.

• The server doesn't have to examine the contents of all your pages looking for tags it needs to parse. So, this method doesn't slow down the server.

To specify the trailer you want to use, set the TrailerType, TrailerText, TrailerFmt, and TrailerFindEnd parameters for a virtual server in the Setup Virtual Server page.

• If you don't specify the TrailerType, the trailers aren't added.

• You can enter the TrailerText in a text area on the Setup Virtual Server page. It can contain text and HTML tags. The contents of TrailerText are URL-encoded in the configuration file. For example, if you want a trailer like this:

    
    ---------------------------------------------------------
    Comments to web@me.com
    
    Copyright © 1995, Me Inc.
    Last modified: Nov-15-1995

Your TrailerText entry would be as follows:


    
    <hr>
    Comments to <A HREF="mailto:web@me.com">web@me.com</A>
    <P>
    <A HREF="legal.html">Copyright &copy; 1995, Me Inc.</A>
    <BR>Last modified: :LASTMOD:

The :LASTMOD: variable adds the most recent modification date of the file to the trailer. This date can be different for different files.

• TrailerFmt specifies the date/time format to use for the :LASTMOD: variable used in the example that follows. You can use the formats on page 6.

• TrailerFindEnd tells the AOLserver to insert the trailer just before any </BODY> and </HTML> end tags. If you don't set it or you set it to "no", the trailer is added after these end tags, and some browsers (including AOLpress) will ignore the trailer.