Have you always thought Server Side Includes (SSI) was too complex? Check out Clay Dowling's tips as he explains some simple SSI directives and how to simplify managing navigation menus.
Using SSI to Boost Efficiency - Navigation Menus (Page 5 of 7 )
Every website has, or should have, navigation menus to make getting around the site easy. For the most part, these menus are the same on every page. Even with a complex site, you'll have large numbers of pages with the same menus. That makes them a natural for managing with SSI.
A good example of a navigation menu from my site is below:
If I save this to the file "menu.shtml" I can now put the menu in all of my pages with the directive:
<!--#include virtual="menu.shtml" -->
The files included by a #include directive are also parsed for include directives. This means I can put a uniform page header on all my pages and make the menu part of that header. I'll put this bit of code in a file called "top.shtml":
Now when we add new pages to our website, the only place where we have to add a link to the page is in "menu.shtml". It will automatically appear in both the main menu at the top of the page and at the little bottom menu.
I have also successfully used a CGI program to generate my menus dynamically. Given how easy it is to maintain a single include file, I only recommend the CGI approach in situations where you're looking to generate a menu that changes based on context. This could be good, for instance, where the menu shouldn't have an active link for the current page. In that case you'd use #exec instead of #include.
HTML 
HTML5 Boilerplate Introduction
