Apache Handlers

Like the MIME handlers, this is just like adding your own file extension in windows, only these files will get parsed/executed by the apache server.

Examples of scripts that are parsed/executed by the server are Perl/CGI scripts and SHTML files.

A potential use:
If you had a web site that you moved from another host, and it was written in SHTML only the files had the extention .shtm. If the server ignored them as it was an unrecognise file type you could easily add .shtm in here to do the same job as SHTML, and the site would work fine.