Using The Common Gateway Interface

Online Forms & Surveys

Are you making an online form or survey? The Web Operations Department maintains a single script to handle the processing of e-mail forms and surveys. View the webform documentation.

Users are allowed to use personal CGI programs, stored in their public_html directory, as long as they follow the guidelines established for users. Please note that these programs will run as your userid and poorly written CGI programs can not only damage the system and your account but can provide hackers with a head start on breaking into WPI's machines. Users interested in proper coding practices should review CGI Coding Guidelines, which have been written primarily for members of the WPI staff who write and maintain CGIs on the server:

Any scripts that need to be deployed for official use by the WPI Community must be written by a member of the Computing & Communications Center or Web Operations Department staffs. Any requests to install scripts on the main server will be rejected - if you need a program on the main Web server, please e-mail webmaster@wpi.edu with questions and requests.

Given the potential for security-related problems, the CCC reserves the right to suspend access to this gateway if problems arise until those problems can be resolved.

There is an introduction to CGI at the NCSA Web site, for those who'd like to learn more about this valuable adjunct to the Web. The library also has several books on CGI programming in its collection.

Those who are interested in doing data collection via the web may want to investigate the uses of procmail for this purpose.

CGI scripts currently available to users on the web server:

calendar: display calendar month
date: displays the date
finger: runs finger
fortune: runs fortune
imagemap: Imagemap CGI
logview: View search log
notfound: CGI called when a requested URL isn't found
nslookup: look up internet addresses by name or number
post-query: may be called to debug FORM of METHOD=POST
uptime: shows web computer uptime
webform: a not-so-basic form CGI (replaces mailto, mailform, mailto-require, and survey, all of which are no longer supported)
whitepages: whitepages query engine

Maintained by webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: Jun 26, 2008, 15:55 EDT