Would I need a SSI?

This is my situation. When someone loads the url http://www.mywebsite.com/music/file.wav, a page will come up with a custom music player, logo, ads, etc. Would this require a ssi? I don't want a dialogue to come up asking to download the file or the page be blank.

Would it be the same thing for pictures and password-protected files?

I am using Apache 2.2.9.
Thanks.

 

bump

 

server-side includes (ssi) is used to include one file into another.
useful for nav bars that stay the same on every page.

Hopefully that answers your question. If the new page has elements on it that are shared with all the other pages, then ssi would be useful.

 

Ok, so I would probably want ssi, but how do I get it to do what I described? If you've been to Sourceforge, you can get a direct link to a exe file, but there is also an html page included with it. How do I get it to do that?

 

I'm not quite sure what you mean.

If you look at this page for example, just click on a link to download. It's a basic <a> link.

this is a direct link to a file on that page clicking it starts the download dialogue. It doesn't load a new webpage.

 

Ok, sourceforge bad example, but look at photobucket, http://s423.photobucket.com/albums/...ion=view&current=UT32008-09-1217-46-36-28.flv

Here is a random video. look at the address bar, it is a direct link to a flash file, but it loads a page with it.

 

Although that might look like a direct link to the FILE, it's not. The url is designed to look like is though. The direct link to that file is http://s423.photobucket.com/albums/pp314/gamewolf80/UT32008-09-1217-46-36-28.flv which downloads when you click on it

Ok, now that I understand, I'll answer your question. In the url you posted, notice where it says ?action=view&current= The page is using php to get the video file and display it on the page. It's the same as just having any old webpage url and embedding the video.

A simple php script for this might include IF/ELSE statements, a more complex script might use an SQL database (which I'm sure Photobucket is doing) to grab the file based on whatever the url is.

You can also use .htaccess and Mod_Rewrite to turn direct file links into the link you posted (meaning the url looks like the direct file link, but it's using the ?action=view&current= part of the url behind the scenes)

 

ok that makes sense. Ill look into that thanks.