A CGI Programmer's Reference

Last modified: Sun Oct 8 22:53:54 PDT 1995

Recent Changes:

(8 October 1995) I've gotten about one-third of the revised FAQ done this weekend. -->>>PLEASE NOTE:<<<-- NOT ALL LINKS WILL WORK YET! (Every time I put up a draft and say that quite clearly, I get ten notes complaining about broken links....) Feel free to take a look at what's there, and then send me a note about how some of the links don't work. I hope to finish the rest of the revision within the next couple of days, but we'll just have to see how that goes. The original FAQ is still available, and will continue to be until I get most of the revised FAQ done.
(7 September 1995) Made a couple of scant corrections to the "Off-site reference materials" section, below. Added Lincoln's WWW Security FAQ.
(19 June 1995) One of the most frequent questions about the FAQ has been, "Do you have a copy suitable for downloading and printing?" I've finally gotten around to finishing this little project, so there are now Postscript/US Letter, Postscript/A4 Letter, and plaintext versions of the FAQ. (The Postscript was generated using Michael Toy's Wide World Web Wonder Widget, and the plaintext was generated using lynx -dump.) For the time being, these versions are updated when I get around to it, but since I'm rewriting the FAQ, this shouldn't be a problem. Once the new FAQ is up, I'll automate the process a little more.

These pages are intended to collect information useful to Common Gateway Interface (CGI) programmers. Suggestions for new links, improved explanations, or additional scripts -- or any other comments -- are all highly encouraged. Please contact the maintainer at <hedlund@best.com>.

Local Contents

The Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list on CGI programming.
A categorical listing of existing gateways.

Off-Site Reference Materials

NCSA's CGI documentation, the most frequently-cited reference; and the CGI specification from the same site.
Lincoln Stein's WWW Security FAQ contains an excellent section on CGI security.
The Yahoo lists of existing gateways and CGI materials.

Credits

All of the HTML for this set of pages was written using Nelson Minar's html-helper-mode for Emacs. One great thing about this utility is that it produces particularly readable source; another is that it automatically modifies the "Last Updated" marker.
I've put things together (particularly the FAQ) in the sytle of CERN's WebMaker, but I didn't actually use that package; nor do I have this material in a FrameMaker file. I just like the WebMaker style.