[EvanAnderson]

Server-side includes worked fine but weren't enabled by default in any of the mainstream web servers. I think the lack of default-enabled status hampered their adoption. Joe User couldn't just FTP a bunch of ".shtml" files up to their shared web space and expect it to work right.

I certainly used the heck out of them in the late 90s, though.

It would have been very cool if HTML had been created with the ability to do client-side includes without having to resort to using a Turing-complete VM in the client to do it.

[jmye]

Ahh, yeah! That rings a vague bell of having to futz with IIS at some point to figure out why a page wasn't working. I can't quite recall if it worked in Geocities, but I think some of the gaming websites I was building (maybe xoom? That sounds familiar for some reason) had it on.

[atoav]

[delayed]