CGI Script Information And Installation

CGI Script Information And Installation

Common Gateway Interface or CGI is a specification which allows Web users to run programs on your server. CGI is not a programming language; it is a gateway which allows small programs called "scripts" to be run over the Internet. CGI scripts take input passed to them from a form on a Web page, process the information, and then format the results in HTML. The result is usually a Web page that is generated by the script itself.

The language of choice for CGI processing is Perl, (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language.) Perl is often used because it is specifically designed to grab multiple text files and format them nicely, making it exceptional for writing HTML.

Other languages used occasionally for CGI Scripts are C/C++, Visual Basic, AppleScript, UNIX Shell, and Tcl. CGI Scripts can do almost anything when they are properly written.
To understand how CGI scripts work you should have a good understanding of HTML and some programming experience.

Note: Silver Bullet Hosting does not offer free technical support for configuring third-party CGI scripts.

Your hosting account includes 10 pre-installed CGI scripts. If you would like to download third-party CGI Scripts for your Website, you can find additional scripts via a search engine.

Note: These are general guidelines for installing Perl Scripts. Refer to the readme file that came with your specific script for more information.

To install your Perl scripts, follow these steps:

Open the script files with an editor such as Notepad and make sure that the server paths are correctly entered (See Server Paths below.)
Upload the script files to your server in ASCII mode. The script will not work if you upload the files in BINARY mode. It is recommended that you place the script files in the public_html sub-directory named "cgi-bin" but other public_html directories will allow the operation of CGI scripts.
Change the permissions for your script files. Most scripts require that you make them executable. Many FTP applications allow you to change a file to executable by right-clicking the file on the remote system and clicking CHMOD (Refer to the readme file that came with the script for more information on CHMOD settings.)

Server Paths:
Server: /home/yourusername/public_html
Perl: /usr/bin/perl
PHP: /usr/bin/php
Sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail
Date: /bin/date
FormMail: /cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi