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Overview
These pages are intended for anyone with a site at Spaceports who is interested in learning how
to adapt existing CGI scripts. Most users seem to learn this way, and it has many advantages
over trying to create a script completely from scratch - especially if you are the impatient
type.
I won't go into too many details as to what CGI is or how it works, because at this stage you
really don't need to know too much about it. It is also a huge subject, and I sidetrack
easily enough as it is.
You will not need any programming experience to get started - if you can write HTML and/or
handle a text editor, you can also write and adapt CGI programs. This version is geared very
much towards the Spaceports host and if you have a site elsewhere, many of the system details will
be different. You will need to refer to their documentation too.
Perhaps in the future I will write something similar for other hosts - we shall see.
Before you start
Before you even start looking for scripts you are going to need the following things:-
- A browser and a connection to the Internet.
- You mostly likely have these if you're reading this.
A website and CGI-BIN account at Spaceports.- These two accounts are separate and on different servers, but share the same username.
You could use some other CGI capable host, but specifics may be different.
A suitable FTP program.- This must have the facility to change file permissions and upload mode. I tend to use
WS_FTP LE, which is freeware, details can be found in the FTP
section.
A text editor, such as Notepad.- This must be capable of saving files as plain text (ASCII). Try to avoid using Wordpad
for scripts as it tends to add extra characters if you don't save in the correct format.
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