CGI  Applications
Tips and Trouble Shooting see bottom of page

Preconfigured CGI Scripts We Provide:
Web Site Manager
Upload and work on your site right through your browser, no FTP program needed.
FormMail
A simple CGI used to capture the information of a form and send it to a specified email address.
Guestbook
Guestbook creates a form that allows people to "sign" a digital guestbook that grows with each addition.
Free-for-All Links Page
Lets your visitors leave there links to there web site.
WWWBoard
WWWBoard is a web discussion board system. The script also provides you with administrative utilities to delete and monitor discussions.
Simple Site Search
Let your visitors search your site.
Hit Logger
Keeps track of your hits and where they came from, can also keep track of every page in your web site.

Additional Scripts:
Urchin Pro
A high-performance web traffic reporting system

CGI Applications:
CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface," a fancy name meaning computer programs running on the webserver that can be invoked from a www page at the browser. The "bin" part alludes to the binary executables that result from compiled or assembled programs. It is a bit misleading because cgi's can also be Unix shell scripts or interpreted languages like Perl.

Tips and Trouble Shooting
There are three things which cause 99% of all problems with cgi scripts.
They are:
1.)  Setting the proper "paths"
2.)  Uploading the scripts in ascii format.
3.)  Setting proper permissions.
If you find yourself having problems with any script, check double check and check again the "paths" , "ascii format" and "the permissions"!!!

Where to Put CGI Scripts
Put your cgi scripts in the subdirectory named "/cgi-bin".

Paths
You will see the list below of the most important paths that scripts require. Some scripts are picky about the paths, a path might look like this to point to your cgi bin: /cgi-bin or a script might need the full path and it would look like this: /usr/local/apache/vhosts/YourDomainName.com/cgi-bin

Paths to:
Date:  /bin/date
Sendmail:  /bin/sendmail
Perl:  /usr/bin/perl
Perl5.003:   /usr/bin/perl
Domain or root path: /usr/local/apache/vhosts/YourDomainName.com/htdocs
Cgi-bin path:  /cgi-bin or usr/local/apache/vhosts/YourDomainName.com/cgi-bin

ASCII Format
CGI scripts need to be saved in ASCII format and uploaded to your server's cgi-bin in ASCII or text format. This is very important! Almost any text editor will work for editing scripts.

Setting Permissions:
To change permissions for a file name (.cgi / .pl), you need to chmod the file (change mode).
The following is a simple explanation of file permissions.

When using the numeric system, the code for permissions is as follows:
r = 4
w = 2
x = 1
rwx = 7

The first 7 of our chmod755 tells Unix to change the user's permissions to rxw (because r=4 + w=2 + x=1 adds up to 7.
The second number 5 applies to the group (4+1=5).
The last number 5, refers to others (4+1=5).

chmod 755

Remember: the first 3 apply to user, the second 3 apply to group, and the third 3 apply to others.

Some FTP clients support changing permissions in a more graphical way (see picture above). If you have Fetch for the Mac, you have an easy way to change permissions. Go to the file you want to change the permissions on, and highlight it. Under the Remote menu, select Change Permissions. A window will pop up showing the current permissions for the file you had highlighted, Click on the boxes to change permissions as needed.

WS_FTP and Cute FTP accomplishes the same task as above. Just highlight the file you want to check, and right-click on it. A menu will pop up, then select CHMOD or "change file permissions".

We do not provide free support for CGI scripts which we did not install on your Web Site, although if we do have time we will always try to help our customers!!
If you are not already familiar with CGI scripting, you may want to read a book on the subject or find places on the Internet with CGI scripting information.

There are many good resources for CGI scripts found on the web.
On our Resources and Links page we have a nice listing.
The scripts at Matt's Script Archive found at:
http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/
are very good. Many of our scripts come from there.
Another excellent resource is The CGI Resource Index found at:
http://www.cgi-perl.com/

If you are not an expert, look for scripts that are very well documented and come with step-by-step instructions, or contact us for help or installation.

If at any time you find your self having problems please send support an e-mail.