CGI Script Installation Tutorial 7.Selecting and evaluating a script!	1.0/5.0 (1 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
Benny Alexander December 22, 2004

Benny Alexander

Benny Alexander Stylus Systems Article

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Finding the suitable scripts for your site is the first and important phase of installing any script. You cannot try out every available script by installing it. It is too time consuming and you may find after hours of struggling with it that the script is not working. When I was a beginner, I installed a huge script and configured it and the script started running successfully. But very soon I found that I was unable to enjoy many of its functions because of a Perl version conflict. The script author informed me that it can run only on a server which has Perl 5.004 or above, but our server had only version 5.003. That was a bad day for me. So you should be really careful to learn your server capabilities like Server Side Include support, Perl version and of course the cgi-bin permissions. (We can learn about this later).

You can decide if a script is good for you by looking at

the information available about the script on its website

the demo of the script (most script writers provide one)

listed sites that use the script

the system requirements for the script (What does the server require?)

the support that comes with the script (like FAQ pages, help forums and e-mail support). If you are lucky you can find a script writer who will install it free for you. Some companies offer the service of installing scripts in your web site for a fee of $25-$100.

If you are satisfied with the information you have discovered about a script, then you are ready to download it. Once downloaded you can use any of the unzip utilities to extract the downloaded file. I use Winzip, as this can unzip most of the files. Move the unzipped files into a separate folder in your local hard drive. Among the unzipped files, you may find some .html files. You can evaluate the .html file and find whether the script is making use of it as a template. If it is, then I can say you are lucky enough to be able to edit and customize the appearance of it according to the design of your web page.

Scripts That Can be Easily Modified to Fit the Design of a Site
Some .html files, may contain a Form tag like,

<form action="filename.cgi" method ="GET">

This means that you can directly call this file in a browser or you can change its appearance with your favorite HTML editor. But not all the scripts permit this. Mostly they are .cgi or .pl files and after installing them successfully, you may find that they are generating some html files dynamically. Hence you wouldn't have much control over how the script appears on your page. If you attempt to modify the script it will be at your own risk.

If you have a good grip on the programming, and are courageous, you can try to find and change some properties like color or font defining the output html document. But it’s not advisable to modify the script if you are not sure of what you are doing. At this point, if you feel that the script is not flexible enough to meet your needs, you can change to another script. Sometimes we don't bother about the script's flexibility if its functions are great. do we? There we can be flexible!