This approach was first used in HTTPD server (from NCSA), and then
incorporated into Apache. Now, it is a de facto standard and present
in many commercial Web servers. How it works?
-  File need to have special extension. Usually .shtml
is used. 
-  Files with the .shtml are processed through
a filter which looks for HTML comments 
<!-- #somekeyword... --> with a special syntax.
-  The content of the special comment is replaced with dynamic content.
There are many SSIs. The popular SSIs are:
-  <!--#include file="somefile" -->  includes
a file at in place of the tag.
-  <!--#set var="script_dir" 
value="/usr/local/bin" --> sets an environment variable (so the next
call to a script can use it
-  <!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/list_directory.pl" 
--> executes a CGI script
-  <!--#exec cmd="ps -ef | grep nobody" 
--> executes a system commad (here it lists processes run by user
nobody
Detailed syntax of SSH is avaliable from Apache Web site:
http://httpd.apache.org/