I suddenly realized a very simple solution to my simple problem! the "require" command. I should have thought of this before. It's a hassle updating the output of all my CGIs, but if I just call for each CGI to include a list of variables containing my output paramaters, I only have to update one file to change all the CGIs, which was my premise on using SSI in the first place. So, if anyone else is still hunting for an answer, this was mine.