How to find/get/use cgi

[nubbin]

I want to put a feedback form on my surgery website, and I'm told I need to use cgi via the server. Can anyone out there tell me what this means, and where do I acquire the cgi-script? CleG, I would e-mail you, but since I wiped my hard disk, I've lost your offline e-mail address.

[ap_smith]

CGI is a poor way to go. What webserver is it? That will decide (to a point) which technologies you can use.

[ninja_eli]

If you want the form to email you, you can use some of the free scrpts that are out there. I knew the name of a good one but can't remember it right now, will post if I can and if you haven't resolved by then.

Otherwise you can use Frontpage to do it aswell, which is an easy option if you are building/have built the site yourself, but the server must have Frontpage extensions installed. It will write a csv file for you on the server that you can download.

Regards

[ap_smith]

Frontpage extensions are not advised, as they have more security holes than a tramp's jumper!

[ninja_eli]

Check out this site

www7.freedback.com/?verts/rem_thefree

And this other one will guide you through adding the necessary code to the pages etc.

www.thesitewizard.com/archive/feedbackphp.shtml

[ianpicknell]

Nubbin, if you post the address for your surgery website we can tell what web server it's running on, and hence suggest an appropriate feedback device (CGI, PHP, ASP etc.)

Is it running on the same server as www.nubbin.150m.com ? (That's running Apache 1.3.20 on a Unix box)

[CarZee]

prime candidate for PHP if it is....

[elanturbo]

speak english!

[CarZee]

Que?

[nubbin]

The server is www.smartchoicenet.co.uk, and our website is www.thurcroft-surgery.org.uk. Does this help? Beware, though, I am completely HTML illiterate!!

I designed it in Dreamweaver3, which is probably a relevant fact...

>> Edited by nubbin on Thursday 27th June 17:02

[ap_smith]

It looks like a Microsoft based hosting facility, in which case they *might* already have the Frontpage extensions available, but if not you'll probably be best to use ASP (Active Server Pages).

You'll probably need to use an ASP page with a form in it to email you the results of the feedback (unless you want a database to store these for you).

Smartchoice will undoubtedly have some ASP to email tools installed on their servers that you could use, so get a scrpt monkey on Pistonheads with too much time on their hands to write one for you ;-)

[ianpicknell]

quote:
It looks like a Microsoft based hosting facility

Agreed. Running IIS 5.0 on Win2K.

[whatever]

I think you should use PHP, purely because I like to think it's "PistonHeads Protocol"

But then again, I know nothing about all of this.

[nubbin]

The features on the web server that do scrpting are CDO NTS 1.2, Active Perl 5.6, and I get a cgi-bin. The first one is specified for e-mail returns from submission forms, so I guess that's the one to use. I'll speak to the support chaps, as well as picking your brains.noses etc! Thanks for the help, by the way!

[ninja_eli]

quote:
Frontpage extensions are not advised, as they have more security holes than a tramp's jumper!

Its just that it can be an easy way to produce a form to collect data without any coding. I don't know enough about it though as it really isn't my line of work at all. I knew some IT guys would come to the rescue. BTW how can you tell what server its on?

[ap_smith]

When a web server gives back a response, hidden away as part of that response is the server type.

The funny thing is though, that www.smartchoicenet.co.uk actually use an Apache server - Unix - to host their website on.
"Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2510"