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Features
Spaceports offer the following with their CGI-BIN accounts:-
- Free hosting
- 10 Mb space
- CGI
- SSI
- PHP
- MySQL database
- FTP or browser upload
- Banners required, although there are low cost options to remove them
- Commercial sites allowed
- URL in the form of http://cgi-bin.spaceports.com/~username/
Can only be used in conjunction with a standard Spaceports website.
Overview
Spaceports decided to use a totally different server to host their CGI-BIN accounts.
This may seem a strange idea at first, but actually makes for a more stable environment for all.
CGI scripts can be very disruptive if misused, and keeping them separate from the main website
servers allows to keep downtime to a minimum. If a script gets out of control and the CGI-BIN
server resets, the HTML pages on the standard servers are unaffected.
Limited
The CGI-BIN accounts are limited to 10Mb space or 1000 files. It is worth bearing this in
mind if you intend to use a script with a very large database, such as a forum. Using MySQL
is one way around this restriction.
Keeping as many of your files as possible on the standard server is the best solution to this
minor problem. There are still quite a few free providers who give you less than 10 Mb space
overall!
Conclusion
The CGI-BIN can be a very useful addition to your basic site, but it can be a little frustrating
at times. There is a forum available to discuss CGI related problems, and I have a number of
pages on the subject, so you will not have to cope alone.
Overall, the result is well worth the effort. Spaceports are one of the most reliable CGI
enabled free hosts around.
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