Steemit Markup Language Needs Server Side Includes

Steemit markup needs something analogous to Server Side Includes added to its markup to make it a practical platform for multi document content. This technological feature is not necessary in the sense that you can do the same thing by hand. But I can walk to work too but I still ride the train. Just because something can be done by hand doesn’t mean it should be done by hand. Technology exists to make our lives easier. To not make full use of this is wasteful, wrong, stupid, and just really not cool. When the technology to make our lives easier is there use it. Always use it, that is what technology is for. And the technology is here, this idea is decades old, it needs to be added to Steemit markup. Cool people do it.

Server Side Includes are an extraordinarily useful feature when you have enough control over the web server to use them. Obviously users do not and should not have enough control over the Steemit servers to use Server Side Includes. But the idea needs to be implemented in some way. The way I remember it this started with word processors, maybe even by the late 80s. Then in the 90s Apple made it system wide with Publish and Subscribe, and Microsoft imitated it with Object Linking and Embedding. This idea is not new and has taken many forms. On the web the most common usage would probably be with php includes. All of these things are the same idea, Server Side Includes, OLE, Publish and Subscribe, php includes. It’s al the same. You write something once and then you just link to it later and the computer follows the link to the source and reproduces the source everywhere the link appears. Do not get confused, this is not a hyperlink or anything similar. This is not a clickable button or clickable text or clickable anything. Nothing gets clicked. The computer alone follows the link and inserts what it finds at the link into your document at the location of the link. On a large, multi document web site the amount of time saved by this cannot be underestimated. Once you’ve used Server Side Includes not having them feels like torture. I’ve used Server Side Includes, not having them on Steemit feels like torture. The amount of time saved is worth whatever programming resources are needed. Server Side Includes allow smart looking, sophisticated multi document content to be easily written and formatted. The time saved allows you to focus on the writing, let the computer do the drudgery. And inserting repeating elements into every document of multi document content is drudgery.

Let me give you an example, you have written ten articles and at the bottom of each you want a section of text with the header More Articles By This Author and the titles of all the the articles as clickable links. You want this same exact piece of text at the bottom of each article. With server side includes you don’t have to write it ten times, you don’t have to cut and paste it ten times, you just write it once. Then you only write the link to the More Articles By This Author text at the bottom of each article. When the computer loads the article a viewer is looking at it follows the link to the More Articles By This Author link you wrote and inserts that text at the location of the link. The computer does the drudge work and lets the writer focus on writing. This might not sound like a great improvement. The reader might think, you still have to cut and paste the link to the More Articles By This Author text to each article, that isn’t any faster than cutting and pasting the whole thing. It is, it is vastly faster. Because you are always going to be changing the text of the More Articles section. Because you are going to be constantly writing more articles. With Server Side Includes each time you add an article you only alter the text at the More Articles snippet once. That is all the work you do. If you have ten articles and write an eleventh you have to change ten articles to include the new link in the More Articles section without Server Side Includes. If you have one hundred articles you have to change one hundred articles. It’s too much work. Server Side Includes means you only change one piece of text and the More Articles section of every page is automatically changed. Once you have seen how useful this is not having it is torture. Steemit doesn’t have it.

I understand that an exact imitation of Server Side Includes or php includes would not work on Steemit. But smart programmers could figure something out. Adding a Steemit version of Publish and Subscribe, OLE, SSI, php includes, would allow writers to make more elegant and well designed multi document content on Steemit. The drudgery would be taken out of it allowing more time for writing. Elegantly displayed navigation tools could be written once and then reused on multiple documents. A consistent feel to the multi document content would aid the user experience and help the writer expose readers to more content without degrading the user experience. There is a reason why this method is used wherever possible. Make it possible on Steemit. It will be better for writers, it will be better for readers. This is why technology exists, to not use technology to make our lives easier is wasteful, wrong, stupid and just not cool.