General Guidelines
CGI, PHP, and Server Side Includes should all work without much
modification on our server. You don't need permission to run CGI scripts,
and the web server has most of the popular extensions built in.
You do not need to have a .htaccess file to use server side
includes, php, or cgi scripts. If you don't know what a .htaccess
file is, just ignore this paragraph.
Security Considerations
CGI programs provide a mechanism for passing information gathered from
the Web into a program running under your userid. Be
warned. If you use CGI programs within your Web directory, you
may accidentally allow someone to snoop through, remove, or even modify
the files in your Web directory. Be careful.
For information about writing secure CGI programs, see:
- The WWW
Security FAQ
- Sanitizing
User-Supplied Data in CGI Scripts
- A CGI Security
Tutorial
Note: for security reasons, a server error results if any portion of
the path to a CGI program includes a symbolic link or is not owned by your
account. Also, the directory containing a CGI program cannot be world
writable.
PHP Scripts
To use PHP scripts, rename any file containing a php script to
filename.php. Files that are referenced into
your PHP script can be named anything you want.
Server Side Includes
To use server side includes, rename any file containing a server
side include to filename.shtml. Files that are included into
your html files can be named anything you want.
CGI Scripts
I assume you already have a web page up on the server. If not, then
read the personal
web pages first
To install a cgi script, first you put it somewhere under your
public_html directory. Many people create a directory under public_html
called cgi-bin and put scripts in that directory, but this is not
required on our server.
Next you must make the file executable, do this with a 'chmod
u+x filename.cgi'.
What to do if it doesn't work.
If the server says something along the lines of 'access forbidden', when you try to run the script in a browser, you need to fix the permissions on either the file or the directory containing the file. To do this, type this into the unix shell;
chmod 755 useyourfilenamehere.cgi
If that doesn't work, take a look at using permissionsand chmod.
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