Creating an Interactive Web Site with CGI

Creating an Interactive Web Site with CGI

Introduction

The Internet explosion of the 1990’s has been one of the most revolutionizing business factors of the decade. The Internet allows individuals and businesses to reach each other more effectively at an increasingly lower cost.

However, the most effective method of interaction is two-way interaction. This applies whether the interaction is between two people, a person and a business or two businesses. Basic HTML web pages allow for easy one way interaction. It also allows people to send e-mail back and forth.

More effective web pages allow for immediate two-way interaction. These pages can gather survey data, create shopping carts, check credit ratings or even simply have visitors sign a guest book. Interactive web sites definitely have advantages over their less advanced cousins. Common Gateway Interface (CGI) provides one of the more common formats for designing an interactive site.

This paper will address some of the concepts behind creating an interactive web site with CGI. It will proceed by considering the following points:

1. Background

2. Creating forms

Background

Before explaining how CGI works, it is helpful to gain an overall perspective of how the internet itself functions in connection with the end user. Bruce Gronich of BigNoseBird.com provides a good analogy that will be used throughout this paper. He compares the end user’s browser to a rat searching for food. The garbage can doles out the food when the rat requests it. The garbage can is the server. So, the browser requests information from the server, and the server in return doles out the information that is requested.

The server uses differe...

... middle of paper ...

...lt;INPUT TYPE="reset" value=" Clear-Form">

<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="FORM_NAME" VALUE="THE TEST FORM">

<INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="MAIL_TO"

VALUE="[e-mail]">

</PRE>

</FORM>

Conclusion

This paper has been primarily about some of the HTML codes required to put together an interactive web site. It has reviewed how the internet works and how to assemble a form on a browser. The paper has also addressed how the information needs to be formatted so that it can be successfully passed to a cgi script for further processing.

Acknowledgements

The primary source used in this paper was the web site www.bignosebird.com

The web site www.icthus.net/CGI-city/ was also helpful.

Finally, the textbook Frontiers of Electronic Commerce provided some information as well.