Server Side Includes Not Working on Windows 2008/IIS 7

Question

We have a Windows 2008 web server running IIS7 and cannot seem to get ServerSideIncludes to work despite following all the instructions we could find. Here are the steps we have completed:

1. Enabled SSIs in IIS 7
2. Confirmed ServerSideIncludes was shown as "installed" under Application Development
3. Added *.html as a mapping in "Add Mapping Module"
4. Created "inc" folder in our web site to hold all included files, and set that folder to have "execute" rights for scripts.

5. Added this code to web.config file to be sure SSIs were enabled:

   <location path="/webs/[ourwebname]">
      <system.webServer>
         <serverSideInclude ssiExecDisable="false" />
      </system.webServer>
   </location>
   

6. Added this line of code to my default.html file to serve included content:

   <!-- #include file = "/inc/myfile.html" -->
   

When I upload default.html to our server and view it in a browser the file displays but the included content does not appear. When I look at the source code for that page it shows my code above as an HTML comment and is not executing the code?

Also, if I change the extension to .shtml and upload that file to our server and then view it in a browser I get an "Error 404 - File Not Found" error?

What am I missing or doing wrong?

Answer 1

if you follow this to the letter, it will work.

IIS 7 Server Side Includes

worked on the very first try for me.

from your steps above sounds like you skipped one step:

Select "ServerSideIncludeModule" from the Module drop down list

Request Path: *.html

Module: ServerSideIncludeModule

Executable: blank

Name: SSI-html