1&1 WEBHOSTING FAQ | What are the options for programming CGI scripts?

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What are the options for programming CGI scripts?

In our "Premium, DIY, Business and Professionals" Packages we offer the option to execute your own CGI scripts. You have the choice between the script languages Perl, Python and PHP (Versions 3 and 4). PHP was especially designed for developing web applications. Documentation for Perl can be found under www.perl.com; a complete and very well written tutorial for PHP exists under www.php.net.

Freely distributed and easily configurable scripts are available under the following URLs:

www.cgi-resources.com/

freecode.com

http://nms-cgi.sf.net/

Please note that Perl scripts could only executed if their file extension is .pl and the first line of the script starts with #!/usr/bin/perl.

Please note that Perl scripts must be transferred in ASCII mode and the execution rights must be set as follows: User:read, write, execute Group:read, execute Others/World:read, execute (which is evaluated numerically to 755).

More settings:

Document Root (the absolute path to your web):	$ENV{'DOCUMENT_ROOT'} (Perl) or $DOCUMENT_ROOT (PHP)
File extension for Perl scripts:	.pl
File extension for PHP scripts:	.php3 / .php4
Perl5.004:	/usr/bin/perl
sendmail:	/usr/sbin/sendmail

Your CGI programs can be stored anywhere on your website - a special directory such as /cgi-bin is not a must.
The file extensions .pl, .php3 and .php4 determine whether or not a CGI script is executable.

Important: Please optimise your scripts relative to memory usage and CPU time. Our system automatically stops scripts that use too many system resources.