Search
Related Links


 

 

Informative Articles

Choosing the Right Web Designer
Title: "Choosing the Right Web Designer" Copyright (c) 2002 Author: Andy Quick Contact Author: mailto:andy@findmyhosting.com Website: findmyhosting-webhostingsearch (http://www.findmyhosting.com) Publishing Guidelines: You have permission to publish...

Personal Web Hosting – Free Or Cheap?
After you have spent some time and creativity on designing your personal web site now it’s time to publish it on the World Wide Web for all to see it. When coming to web hosting, many face the dilemma of choosing between free or paid web...

Unique Features that leading Web Hosts Are Now Offering
Some web hosts are offering more than others for the same price or even for a lower price. There is no denying the fact that as competition increases amongst web hosting services, many are looking for ways and means to stand out and be different...

Web hosting is SO retail
You have 1 or 2 seconds to make an impression, and 2 or 3 seconds more to make a sale, or forget the web hosting business!! Web hosting as a business has taken off in the last 12 months, with a vengeance. How many web sites are on the Web today?...

Web Site Marketing Strategy - Article Submission To Article Directories
Every website needs traffic. It's pretty simple really. No matter how wonderful your website design is, it will just squander in no man's land if no one ends up visiting it. Obviously, if you have a business enterprise being run on your web site,...

 
Google
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.