It seems that some things are still best done using PHP…

There’s a debate at Brain Bulb

NB Brain Bulb is a PHP consultancy

Basically:

For a handful of pages that are almost entirely static HTML… …you don’t need a whole framework like Ruby-on-Rails

Included within this debate, there’s an explanation from Yahoo! about why they chose PHP.

SSI Modules

That said, there is a module (written by a French author, so I don’t understand the jokes on his site).

There’s another at shiroikumo

Conclusion

For the time being I’m sticking with PHP SSI!