really dumb ssi question

[venturi]

Agreed, DD, on a typical server built for adult traffic AddHandler *shouldn't* bring it down to it's knees - but it may affect page load times noticably if you have TONS of pages. However, some of the mainstream hosts I've seen will shoot craps just with a CGI banner rotator running - totally different world there. :/

OK, the syntax...
In your .htaccess file add this:

XBitHack on

Then using SSH or FTP change permissions on your .html files that have SSI includes to 755 (or -rwxr-xr-x).

That's it! Now apache will only parse those files with the 755 perms for SSI.

One caveat to this method... It can be a chore to keep track of what pages should be 755 and what don't. I didn't keep records of this stuff last time I changed hosts and it was a PIA to sort things out...