CGI - FAQ

1. Where is sendmail, perl, and date located?
2. What version of perl does WebHostPage support?
3. What file extentions can I use for CGI scripts with WebHostPage?
4. What do I need to fix if I'm getting a "500 Internal Server" error?
5. What do I need to fix if I'm getting a "Forbidden" error?
6. How do I use Server Side Includes?
7. Where can I get CGI/Perl scripts?

Where is sendmail, perl, and date located?

Some CGI scripts require to supply the system path to certain system binaries.   Here's the 3 most common ones:

sendmail - /usr/sbin/sendmail
perl - /usr/bin/perl
date - /bin/date

What version of perl does WebHostPage support?

WebHostPage currently supports Perl version 5.0.  Because Perl 5.0 is backwards compatible with Perl version 4.0, there is no reason for us to offer version 4.0 .

What file extentions can I use for CGI scripts with WebHostPage?

When you use CGI scripts with WebHostPage, you need to give them either a .cgi or a .pl extention.  Otherwise, the web server will not recognize them as cgi scripts and will display them like a txt file or a .html document.

What do I need to fix if I'm getting a "500 Internal Server" error?

There are several reasons that you could be getting this error.

First, make sure you read ALL of the instructions that came with the CGI script.

Second, make sure that you upload your CGI script in ASCII format.   Your FTP client should allow you to choose between either ASCII(or plain text), Binary(or images), or auto.  Select ASCII.  If you upload your CGI script in Binary mode, it will put a "^M" at the end of every line in the file, which causes problems with CGI scripts.

Third, if your CGI script is a perl script, make sure the top line says:
#!/usr/bin/perl

Fourth, make sure your cgi script has correct syntax.  You can go to net-admin under Misc. Utils and use the perl checker to verify that your CGI script has correct syntax.

Fifth, drop us an email.  We can take a look at it and check for little errors.  Please make sure you have fixed everything in step 1 - 4 before emailing us.  We will not guarantee that we can get your CGI script to work, because that is not part of our technical support program, but we can take a look and tell you how to fix it if we don't fix it for you.

What do I need to fix if I'm getting a "Forbidden" error?

This error is usually caused by an error with permission settings.  You will need to download a program like WS_FTP which allows UNIX CHMOD's via FTP.  You can download WS_FTP for free from http://www.tucows.com .   Once you have installed WS_FTP, connect to your site and find the cgi script you need to fix.  click your right mouse button on it(on the server side, not the one on your hard drive), then select "chmod (UNIX)".  It will open up a window with 3 boxes, owner, group, and other.  In each of those boxes, you will have 3 choices, read, write, and execute.  Most cgi scripts need to be set to read/execute to work correctly.  When your CGI documentation requires you to set the permissions to 755, it will have these permissions:

owner - read, write, and execute
group - read, and execute
other - read, and execute

When it asks you to set the permissions to 777 it will have these permissions:

owner - read, write, and execute
group - read, write, and execute
other - read, write and execute

How do I use Server Side Includes?

WebHostPage supports server side includes.  The syntax for a Server Side Include looks like this:

<!--#<tag> <variable>-->

So a practical example is our counter.  The syntax for it is:

<!--#exec cmd="/~scripts/html/counter.pl domain id style"-->

To show the date of the last time the html document was updated, you can use a SSI like this:

<!--#echo var="LAST_MODIFIED"-->

Where can I get CGI/Perl scripts?

We recommend the following sites for CGI scripts:
http://www.cgi-resources.com
http://www.thanks-cgi.com