How to Use Include Tag in IIS 5.x

To include a HTML or Text or .inc file within an ASP file is no problem.
You can use the follwoing tag to include a file called abc.inc in you
foo.asp file:

<!--#include file="abc.inc" -->

The file that you will be calling through the browser is an ASP file
(abc.asp) and IIS knows how to handle INCLUDE in a ASP file.

Now Lets say that there is a file that you would like to include on all
pages of your website which reside is different directories. Well for
this we will have to use the VIRTUAL include.

To be able to use the virtual includes, we need to setup a virtual directory.
In the following example I will setup a virtual directory called TEST
(c:\Inetpub\wwwroot\test).

Go to Start > Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools
> Internet Information Services

Double Click it and you should see something like this:

Great! Now we have created a Virtual Folder and if you look at the
image above you will see that I have 2 files in folder. These files were
in the TEST directory when I started making the virtual folder.

Now I want to include the file called banner.inc in all of ASP and HTML
files. To include this file in ASP you will now write a include statement
like this:

<!--#include virtual="/test/banner.inc" -->

NOTE: Never put "../" or "./" in the incluide statement.
It will not recognize it.

Now to include banner.inc in your HTML files you will use the same include
tag but first you have to tell your webserver to look for the include
statement in your HTML files. For this Right Click on the virtual directory
that we ceated "TEST" and select Properties. You will get a
window like this

Now comes the tricky part. In the Add / Edit Application Extension
Mapping Window you might have noticed that the OK button is not enabled.
Well this is a BUG in IIS 5.x. The remedy is to click on the Executable
Text area after typing in the Extension. You will notice that the entry
"C:\WINDOWS\system...\ssinc.dll" will expand and will become
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetsvr\ssinc.dll" thus enabling your "OK"
button.

Click OK, Refresh your webserver. Create a .html file and include the
following tag to include banner.inc

<!--#include virtual="/test/banner.inc" --!>

Now you should be able to see the output of banner.inc within a HTML
file.

-Happy ASPing