Archives > CGI Script Installation Tutorial

By Benny Alexander

Okay. Why CGI script?
There are times when you might want to have some of your pages dynamic or interactive with the site users. This can be as simple as a counter saying, 'You are the visitor no #####', but it could also include such things as a Survey or Opinion poll based on user input and provides the responses from some questions asked them. And the best way you can produce results like these is with CGI scripts.

There are other type of scripts like Java Scripts that can do some things, but they have limitations and can only work on the client- side. In other words, the scripts are interpreted and run in the browser of the user. Whereas CGI scripts will directly interact with the server, where your whole web site resides, simply they are server-side. Since it works from your server you can take control over the scripts which are running by using other server files, for example the sendmail program of Unix. Javascripts don't access any of your other files, (for example you cannot access a database which is in your server). Javascripts are simply inserted into your HTML pages, which can be run by the browser.

Netscape browsers don't support VBScripts and ActiveX, so we cannot think about them now. Another technology like ASP can be used instead of CGI but only in a Windows-NT server and UNIX servers can't support them. We can use Java applets, but speed would be a problem with Java applets. So, we prefer CGI scripts, though its not an easier one. We can look forward to some other technology which can do better than all of these technologies in the future.

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