HTML Page Rotation

There's always something new to learn on the web. It never seems to end. I'm not complaining, I think this is just fine.

My most recent challenge has been related to setting up some page rotations inside some existing HTML pages. I actually have many clinical case studies that I want to rotate through several pages that give access to information but would themselves be somewhat boring. The solution is to rotate the cases through those otherwise boring pages to keep them interesting for visitors.

I investigated various solutions. One can use php or SSI or JavaScript driven by PERL. They each offer their own benefits.

So far I have found one excellent piece of software that works very well. It certainly does the job. It is written in PERL and, unfortunately as it turns out, uses JavaScript on the page in which it embeds the rotated content. I say unfortunately because this renders the case study content invisible to the search engines, which I think is a big downside.

I certainly am not ruled by the dictates of the search engines. However, they are very useful and I see no problem with accommodating them when the benefits are mutual.

So back to the drawing board, so to speak. My next solution uses PERL to manage the rotation but does the insertion of the rotated case study content by standard SSI. This is probably the best way for me to go but at present I am having some difficulty persuading my server to work properly with includes while sticking with dot HTML file names.

I know that I can setup MIME types on my Apache server or use the .htaccess file but neither of those workef for some reason when I tried them last night. Mind you, I was pretty tired, so I had best try again with a fresher mind.

OK, off to do just that then...