Chapter 8. CGI Scripts
When I talk about "CGI scripts," I'm talking about software that is installed on your web server and is usually used in some kind of interaction with your visitors. This might be form-processing software to handle your "contact form," shopping cart or order-processing software, affiliate software, or an infinite number of other possibilities. Sometimes it interacts only with you, the site administrator (e.g., traffic analysis tools).
The most popular programming languages for Unix/Linux web servers are PHP and Perl. If your web site is hosted on a Windows server, the programs will most likely be done with "Active Server Pages" (ASP).
(Usually PHP software doesn't use the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and therefore is not technically CGI software—but the result is the same for the users. They fill out a form, click a button, and see some kind of results based on their input.)
There's no way I could link to every useful server-based software program available to you—but here are several sites where you can poke around and see what they've got to offer. If you have a specific need, you can usually find something that fits. Sometimes just browsing the software descriptions will give you ideas you hadn't thought of before.
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