Choosing CGI Bin Hosting

While CGI bin hosting isn't the cutting edge of scripting, it's still useful for many of things. You can make guest books, forms, and much more for your web page using CGI. However, it's important to make sure your host is capable of CGI hosting before you try to set up your page. Almost any UNIX host will do the job, but not every server is set up to handle CGI. If you're looking for discount web hosting, you'll need to shop carefully to find what you're looking for.

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface, and is a method used for exchanging data between the server and your browser. CGI acts as a set of standards that allow a script or a program to send data back to the server for processing. Most web pages of this type use HTML tags to collect the data, which is then passed on to the CGI routine. That routine then acts on the data in some way. Modern pages use PHP to do the jobs that CGI was once standard for.

Common things CGI is used for include guest books, maintaining mailing lists, and creating email forms. CGI routines can be written in a number of languages, but PERL is one of the more common ones. This simple to understand and use scripting language will be part of any CGI web hosting. You just create a tag that includes the name of your routine, and tags that get the data from your visitors. When the visitors submits their information, the routine is executed, and it sends the data back to the server.

If you have good hosting, you can install routines on your own site. Other hosts won't let you put your own routines on, though they may have some pre-written routines available. If you can't fulfill your needs using these routines, however, you'll need to find a remote CGI bin web hosting service, or a new web host. Your routines should be installed in the cgi-bin directory of your site.

Look for UNIX servers if you want CGI support. While you can get support from Windows machines, they can be slow or buggy. CGI bin hosting that's optimized is a better choice from the start, even if you're looking for discount web hosting. If you're not sure whether or not a host is right for you, talk to the support staff and administrators to find out.

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