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Domain and website tools
Domain and website tools By Clare Lawrence 29th October 2003 Clare is the CEO of Discount Domains Ltd a leading UK Domain name registration service. I use several tools to monitor the performance of my own websites, by regularly reviewing their...
How Search Engines Work
Before anyone can start optimizing a web site, you must understand how search engines work.
Search engine optimization is the hardest thing to do for a webmaster because there are so many rules to it and you have to stay up to date with all...
Interactive Features
If you really want people to be attracted to your web site time after time, you need to add interactivity. This can be as simple or as complicated as you want. It does not matter whether you are a beginner, an intermediate webmaster or the most...
Why Aren't You Using CGI
The very name CGI used to send chills up my spine. For years I put it in the 'too-hard-basket'. But like most things in life, CGI is not as scary as it seems. If you have a cgi directory on your website and you know how to FTP files, chances are you...
Why Autoresponders Are an Essential Tool for Every Internet Business
I admit it -- when I'm on the Internet, I want everything instantly. And I know I'm not alone; in our high-speed world we expect to get what we want with the click-of-a- mouse. To help fulfill this desire for everything "now, now, now!", many...
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CGI Web Hosting - 3 Essential Scripts for your Business
If there's one thing that people love it is a web site that has plenty of automated features. Sites that are highly interactive tend to get the most traffic and generate the most business for the companies that run them. Automated features can also play a "behind the scenes" role, making your site easier to use, run smoothly and allow for things like online sales and password protection. There are many ways to get this type of automation into your site, but all involve either client side or server side scripting.
Scripts are written in programming languages specially designed for the web, and there are several languages that are commonly used. Most client side scripts are written in Java which is still one of the best web programming languages around. Some functions of a web site must be completed via server side scripting, however, and the most commonly used languages for server side scripting are PHP, PERL, and CGI. PHP and PERL are newer languages and are gaining a lot of popularity, but there are still plenty of features that can be scripted in the granddaddy of web scripting languages, CGI.
Shopping Carts
No online sales site would be complete without a functioning shopping cart and most of the best ones have been written in CGI script. CGI web hosting is great for shopping cart scripts because it interfaces well with most databases, including the popular MYSQL and MS Access databases, it can be utilized on Windows, UNIX, LINUX, and MACOS servers with equal ease, and can be easily configured for sales tax and shipping cost calculations. Some newer shopping cart scripts are being written in PHP and
PERL, but most of the functioning carts on the web are in good old CGI web hosting scripts.
Password Protection
Many web sites require some sort of registration and entry of a password for the user to access the site's features. This is done for a number of reasons from simply a desire to track visitors for marketing purposes to allowing postings on message boards and ensuring that users have paid any required fees associated with use of the site. The automated registration process and user name/password issuance can be written with CGI scripts and many of them have been.
Form Managers
Have you ever wondered how the forms you fill out online are handled? In most cases, they're handled by CGI web hosting. When a user fills in that form and hits the "submit" button, a CGI script takes over and sends the data in email or writes it to a database where it can be accessed later by the site's administrators.
These are just a few of the uses for CGI scripts on today's web sites. There are literally hundreds of others and if there's something that can be done on a web site, it is something that can be done with CGI. PHP and PERL may be gaining a lot of popularity for various reasons, but CGI was with us first and it isn't going anywhere. As long as there are web sites, CGI web hosting will remain king.
John Michaels is a freelance author for WebHostPacks.com where he regularly publishes articles on how to find a cheap web host and reviews of low cost web hosting services.
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