I design and program Web site but I leave hosting to the pros. It occurs to me to ask whether SSI has a detrimental affect on the serving of pages. I am creating a site now, for instance that has 6 SSIs on each page (including a .css), totalling about 4k. The base .shtml files are 3-8k, and the SSI does not add to the total data delivered--one way or another the same code would be on each page. This lets me make the pages modular in a way that facilitates future updates of the kind this client expects. But will it hurt the performance of the site? (I realize SSI makes work for the server even if it doesn't really change the amount of data being sent.) If so, how much SSI do you think is "too much?"
Second, one of my clients' hosts has told me not to use PERL because if they activate PERL on the server (NT) it will slow way down. I am guessing you can use PERL fine on an NT server and they simply don't know how, but I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they are right, I will look into porting my work--what do you recommend for that? (I should note that they are not saying the activity of my PERL app will slow things down--it won't run often anyway--they are saying that the presence of PERL itself will slow down the server, including other clients hosted on the same box.)
