Setting up a store on your server, or using other less direct methods to merchandise will only be possible if your hosts can supply you with the ability to upload common gateway interface (CGI) programs that can be used to provide your site with some form of automated responses for more sophisticated inventory/shopping cart type of merchandising systems.

On normal UNIX servers (which most are) CGI programs are usually written in a text-file type of "scripting" format called PERL, which also requires that your server have the certain "language interpreters" installed on it. The most common web-server OS is Apache, and it and most others, support everything discussed here.

Apache forms what is called the "gateway", interpreting visitors requests for websites or pages and directing them to that file. CGI's are usually scripts or programs that a page on the server can make use of in some way. The "interface" is this computer language (usually PERL) that interprets the instructions contained in the script with the settings or information from web page that called for it to, say, "write" a reply to your customer, and store or process information about a sale.

You can upload these text programs, called "CGI scripts" to either your sites /cgi-bin/ directory with their native .pl file extension, or in many cases, to your sites own working directory by renaming the files extension to .cgi. In any event, once uploaded, all you need to do is change the file's properties (attributes) to executable, which can be also be done with most (FTP) file transfer programs, and perhaps do some extra tinkering to get this script to do it's job the way you want when invoked by one of your webpages.

Your first step would then be to contact your administrator and determine if your server is UNIX-based and whether it has or can have C++, PERL or PERL5 installed, and if your website can use CGI scripts running under these languages. Usually this is no problem as both UNIX and PERL are "freeware" and widely supported throughout the web. You should also find out where (in what server directory) the PERL language program (interpreter) is located so you can edit the first line of your script you wish to use to "point" accurately to it. Some servers also support "server side" Java and Javascript, which also have similar capabilities.

If your host is running Microsoft's Windows NT Servers, they partially support some of these standards but generally force users to use other proprietary languages and systems including their Active Server Pages and Visual Basic "programming tools" to provide similar functions. This is all tightly controlled proprietary software, that while useful, is hopelessly complicated and expensive to start-up and maintain a modest business with. One minor advantage is that once the byzantine development work is done and programmed, these active servers execute instructions slightly faster and handle more users at once, a concern for some big, multi-user databases.

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