Web Site Assistant

Commercial web application systems used to be expensive at one time. With the advent of open source solutions such applications are not only available for free but in many cases they are superior to commercial systems.

Now anyone can have access to advanced systems and scripts such as content management systems, forums, auction scripts, ecommerce systems, shopping carts, photgallery applications and more. Some example scripts are provided below.

Content Management Systems * Drupal * Mambo Open Source * PHPNuke * PostNuke * XOOPS

E-Commerce Systems * OsCommerce

Image Gallery Scripts * Image Gallery

Message Forums * phpBB2

Are you taking advantage of the powerful automation technology available on the Internet? Common Gateway Interface, better known as CGI, is one of the most widely used server applications on the Internet. This software resides on your server and automatically performs specified functions on your web site.

If you’ve been on the Internet for a while, you’ve probably seen many examples of CGI use and didn’t even realize it. Search Engines, Directories and Forums all use CGI scripts. Scripts can run everything from a form on your web site to an affiliate program. They can give you the power to completely automate your web site.

The very name CGI used to send chills up my spine. For years I put it in the ‘too-hard-basket’. But like most things in life, CGI is not as scary as it seems. If you have a cgi directory on your website and you know how to FTP files, chances are you can have a CGI script up and running in less than 20 minutes.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is not a programming language but a standard that allows visitors to interact with your website. CGI scripts can be written in a number of different languages but most are written in Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language).

Let’s unlock a little bit of the mystery about something called CGI. If it helps any, CGI means Common Gateway Interface. This is a method which is used to exchange data between the server (the hardware and software that actually allows you to get to your web site) and a web client (your browser). CGI is actually a set of standards where a program or script (a series of commands) can send data back to the web server where it can be processed.

Typically, you use standard HTML tags to get data from a person, then pass that data to a CGI routine. The CGI routine then performs some action with the data.