Common Gateway Interface. What it is. What you need to know about it. Some sources for CGI.

First and foremost, you need to ask about CGI, Common Gateway Interface, when you choose a service provider. You need to ask whether they provide any ready made scripts or whether they just provide a cgi-bin directory. You will definitely save yourself a lot of trouble and expense if ready made scripts, especially ready made form handling scripts, are part of the package you get from your service provider.

If you want your pages to do more things, you need CGI. Writing CGI scripts is Greek to us.. CGI is used for security, if you'd rather not use Javascript. You need a little cgi when you use a form. CGI is a way to add interactivity. Previously, you needed a little cgi when you sell things on the Internet; now e-commerce is easier. In fact it should not be undertaken by individuals. Let a company like Yahoo! do all of that for you securely and inexpensively.

There are some free services such as Looksmart's Beseen.com, which can remotely perform several tasks for you such as search, chat, quizzlets, surveys, questionaires, counters, guestbook, navigation, bulletin board, etc., with enhanced functionality over what you would ever be able to achieve with your own CGI implementations.

Free Form Mail! Form Mail wizard. You can put an email form on your page and let your visitors send you email at the click of a button. They run the mail script on their servers so you don't have to know anything about CGI to set it up. Just put the form into your page and upload. It's really that easy. Download the shareware version and give it a whirl. It's fun, and if it's not for you, pass on the info to somebody new to Web Page Design. They will Love you for it ! Download it at
www.coffeecup.com/products.html

The Hot Wired's Web Monkey section on programming and in particular, PERL-CGI echoes our feeling about CGI, "CGI can add a lot of functionality to your site, but who wants to learn all that code?". If this is not techno-babble enough for you, you can go to Web Monkey to get more about CGI, some of which is nuts-and-bolts, some if which is heuristic in nature. If you are a programmer (not necessarily our target audience), you will probably find it useful.

CNET also has CGI for you. You could start with, "The ABC's of CGI," by Matt Rotter.

Matt's Script Archive - Provides many CGI scripts all of which are Free, including a Guestbook, Free For All Link, Bulletin Board Message System, Countdown, Animation, Random Link/Image Scripts, and much more. Craig Patchett and Matt Wright can help you out when you want a little cgi. Recommended Reading: The CGI Cookbook by Craig Patchett and Matt Wright We have a free copy for anybody who wants it. The CD rom is included, too. We tried several times to read the book, but couldn't get much out of it; ditto for the CD. Should we admit that? Why not? CGI is a specialized language which few webbies or anybody, actually know how to write. About as good as you could realistically hope for is to be able to get a script for this or that and find the places where you paste in the variables for personalizing it. You can get the CGI scripts from your service provider or host. As we mentioned previously, ready made scripts are what you want. Most page editors include various CGI scripts on the CD. The CGI Resource Index is a place to get information and scripts.

Thomas Paine was quoted as saying once upon a time: CGI is a little like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer because it feels so good when you stop.