CGI-BIn
CGI-Bin is a subdirectory pre-made for you on some web hosting servers. It is usually located at the base of the directory tree and is the location that executable CGI scripts need to be placed by you (or your programmer). CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface.
CGI scripts perform a variety of tasks covering a wide range of uses. Everything from visitor counters to calendars to contact form processing can be taken care of by a CGI program. CGI programs are able to be hyperlinked to like a regular web page and as such do not require any special code to be used in the HTML file.
CGI is a method that web servers can use to obtain data from documents, databases and programs. It can then present this data to the website visitor. CGI programs are made to run only on websites and can be written in various languages including C, C++, Java and most commonly Perl. Even though CGI scripts work outside of the cgi-bin directory, most web hosts still provide this directory as it is a good idea to store your scripts here for the sake of organization.
In cPanel and other web hosting control panels it is possible to install some CGI scripts without touching the script yourself. This is done with just a few clicks of the mouse button. cPanel generally comes with a couple of great CGI scripts include FormMail Clone and CGI Email.
CGI Email converts a HTML form to an email format which can then be emailed to the desired recipient. If you have a contact form on your website then this is a quick and easy way to receive the information your users have inputted. FormMail Clone serves a similar purpose.
There are thousands of free CGI scripts available online
Some of the most popular are:
- FormMail
- GuestBook
- e-Classifieds
- WWWBoard
- Simple Search
- Online Survey System
- Counter
- TextCounter
The above have been consistently rated as some of the best CGI scripts and some have been around since 1995! CGI is a relatively old way of writing programs and these days many of the same functionality can be achieved with PHP and even JavaScript programs. Some people however continue to prefer to use CGI over other languages and as such, all web hosts still support this forever young technology.