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Informative Articles

4 Tips to Avoid Internet Scams
This article may be freely reproduced provided it is unaltered and the resource box at the end is included. 4 Tips to Avoid Internet Scams If you are new to the internet you will come across numerous programs offering promises of riches. You may...

ASP, CGI and PHP Scripts and Record-Locking: What Every Webmaster Needs To Know
Many of us install server-side (ASP, CGI or PHP) scripts on our web sites, and many of this scripts store data on the server. However, poorly designed scripts can experience performance problems and sometimes even data corruption on busy (and not so...

Ezines, Ezines Everywhere!
There are literally thousands of ezines being published online these days. Sometimes it is hard to know which ones are best for advertising in, reading, subscribing to and so on. How do we know which ones are good and which ones...

Finding the Right Web Hosting Plan
There are many things to consider when choosing a web hosting plan. The five most important are listed below. 1. Disk Space/Storage 2. Data Transfer 3. Cost 4. Programming Languages 5. Support 1....

FTP
Believe it or not, browsing the web with Internet Explorer or Netscape is relatively new. It wasn't that long ago (ten to fifteen years) when the tools you would use on the internet (not the web) were email, gopher (a menu based browser), archie...

How to Choose a Web Hosting Company?
Nowadays, anybody can afford to order a feature-packed web hosting plan for next to nothing; however, affordable price is not the only criterion which should be considered when purchasing web hosting services. In this article, I'll explain the...

How To Set Up Your Own Website
This article deals solely with the mechanics of writing a website and placing it in the search engines. For an explanation of why you want to do this, and how to determine what your target audience is, send a blank email to...

Internet Marketing Tools -- Autoresponder Basics
Autoresponders are one of the most widely used promotional tools on the Internet. They're also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand. They were derived from the very popular fax on demand and designed to automatically respond to...

Search Boxes
One of my pet peeves is webmasters which make it difficult for me to use their site. I mean, I'm there, looking at a page and I just cannot find what I want. I look everywhere for navigation, and what I want to find just doesn't seem to be covered....

The Secrets to Building a Successful Web Site
If you're doing business on the Internet, one of the most important aspects of your success is your web site. If your web site doesn't look professional, no matter what product you're offering, your chance of success will be minimal. Before you...

 
 
 
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.