Question: What exactly is CGI-BIN, and how can it help with an online form? Also, what else do I need to know about using it?

Answer: CGI-BIN is just a folder name, much wil Windows or WINNT (on a windows based system).\n\nIt is a commonly used alias for placement of CGI scripts and applications, and this is where the power of many websites comes from.\n\nCGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a susbet of the HTTP protocol, in that you communicate to the application the same way you would to a web page.\n\nThat is, you call HTTP://domain/mypage.htm the same (mostly) as HTTP://domain/cgi-bin/mailtome...\n\nThe difference begins with the method of the call (GET vs POST - too detailed to cofver here), and also with what might be passed to the CGI.\n\nCGI can be written in just about any language you can think of (PC lingo's), and Java Servlet Pages and Active Servver Pages act much like CGI (they just don't need to be in a /cgi-bin folder). Fact is, nothing 'needs' to be in a folder called cgi-bin, its just conviniet to put scripts there because its so commonly used for that purpose, and lets you identify traffic purpose more easily.\n\nThe CGI-BIN folder/URL won't do diddly for your online form, but, the application you point the online form to is what will 'accept' data from your form, and do something with it (usually, database related, some computation, or email generation).\n\nWhat you need to know is \n1. What do you want to do?\n2. What language do you want to do it in?\n3. What web server are you on?\n\n(and if you are hosted some place)\n\n4. Will the host allow it?\n\nMany hosting companies have 'canned' CGI's available, but will not allow you to write your own (CGI-BIN is also the hackers favorite route to taking over your web server, it opens up some unique vulvernabilities).\n\nBest places to start looking deeper is your web host, your web server documentation, and the main support site for your language of choice (Perl, ASP, Python, etc...etc..etc)
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