Business Support Internet

Allstream provides basic CGIs to all Business Centre Web page customers, making available Hit Counters and Mail forms.

What is CGI?

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a specification, or set of rules, which define a standard way in which a browser can communicate with other programs residing on a web server. Using CGI, the server can call up a program which can take user specific data, processes the data, and then passes the server's response back to the web browser.

Through CGI, each server and client program, regardless of platform or operating system, follow the same rules to mediate the flow and exchange of data between client, server, and gateway program.

How do I use Allstream's CGIs?

If you already know how to write HTML code and and you just want to cut and paste a pre-tested CGI, all you need to do is read the documentation provided for

• our hit counter CGI
• our mail form CGI

If you need to know more about how CGIs work, there is much more info about CGIs and how to use them at http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/CGI/cgi1.html

You can also learn a lot from the formal CGI definition at http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html