What is CGI ?

Common Gateway Interface or CGI is a program that can interact with an html form on your web site, and processes results on your server using a cgi script. The result generated is a dynamic web page. The cgi script is written in a language called PERL ("practical extraction and reporting language").

Uses of CGI scripts

CGI scripts are most commonly used for creating user interaction with a html form on your web site. Other uses include: autoresponders, shopping carts, counters, mailing list managers, ad management, surveys, polls, discussion boards, content management, calendars and click tracking.

There are 100s of free cgi scripts that can be found on Net. Just do a search on Google for "free cgi scripts" or visit resources at end of this article.

We will create an html email form to collect name, email address and comments of subscribers using a secure cgi formmail script. An automatic confirmation will be sent and results of email form will be passed on to your email address.

Steps to installing your own cgi script

1. Check that your web host supports CGI - your web host will have a cgi-bin folder installed on server. The cgi-bin is a special directory in server where all files which require security are kept. This is where you will upload your cgi script once it has been modified.

2. Download cgi script - this is a secure cgi formmail script. Spammers can't access and harvest your email address from this script.

http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.zip

3. Read documentation that comes with script - this will give you a thorough understanding what changes you need to make to have it work correctly with your web site and server. It will also provide you with some examples.

Editing your script

4. Open and edit your cgi script using notepad (don't use an html editor as this can create errors).

5. Remove html tags from script (at top and bottom).

6. Change path to perl to: #!/usr/bin/perl -wT (this is first line of script to be edited).

7. The section of cgi script shown below, are other minimum fields to fill out in script (replace fields in script you downloaded with changed fields in script below).

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