Steps to creating a successful Perl CGI script

1. Get some info from your webhost. Your webhost is the company that has your website on their servers. Having a webhost which properly supports Perl is half the battle. We use Dreamhost, and if you use them then everything on this page should work well for you, and you can skip this step and go to the next one. If your host isn't Dreamhost then you'll need to ask them some questions:

* Do you support Perl? (If not, stop here and get another host that does, like Dreamhost.)
* Can I use the standard shebang line? #!/usr/bin/perl
* Can I use the .cgi extension or do I have to use .pl?
* Can my files go anywhere, or do they have to go in a cgi-bin directory?
* What permissions do I need to set for the script and for the directory it's in?
* Where are my server error logs located?

We'll use the answers to these questions in the steps below.



2. Write your script with a text editor. Many Windows text editors put carriage returns at the ends of lines which can cause Perl scripts to fail. Any of these will solve that problem:

* Use Unix. Use a text editor in the Unix shell such as pico
* Use a Mac. On Mac OS X, use TextEdit (and choose Format > Make Plain Text) and make sure to save your file without the ".txt" on the end. Or, use the built-in editor in the Transmit FTP/SFTP file transfer software.
* Windows: Neither NotePad nor WordPad saves in the proper format, even if you choose Text. (It's not the right kind of Text.) You'll need to either log into the Unix shell and use an editor like pico, or find some other text editor for Windows that saves in the right format, such as TextPad.

3. Your first script. Type this in (or copy & paste it) into a new file:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "Hello, world";

4. Save your file with a .cgi extension (e.g., "hello.cgi"). Some webhosts might require a .pl extension, check with them to find out. With Dreamhost you can use either .cgi or .pl.

5. Upload your file. Check with your webhost to see if you have to put it in a special place. Some hosts require that it go in the cgi-bin directory. If your host is Dreamhost you can put it anywhere.

6. Use ASCII mode for the upload. If you upload in binary mode it won't work.

7. Set permissions. You need to set permissions, which is a fancy way of telling the server that you're authorizing the program to run there. You do this with the Unix command line. (See more about the Unix command line below if it's unfamiliar to you.) Check with your webhost to see what permissions they require. At Dreamhost you set permissions with chmod 755 for both your file and the directory it's in. If you rename the file you need to set its permissions again. If you delete the file from the server and then upload a fresh copy you need to set its permissions again. If you move it to another directory, you have to set the permissions at that new directory.

9. Run the script. There are four different ways to do this:

* As a url (link to the file, e.g., http://mydomain.com/hello.cgi, or type it into a browser window)

* Embedded anywhere in a web page:
See note below.
* As the action for a FORM:

* At the Unix command line: perl hello.cgi



Notes:

If your script is in a cgi-bin directory, don't forget to include that when typing the url.

If this didn't work then see our troubleshooting section.

Embedding the reference in a web page:

The whole page might look like this:

Here's the output from my program:

To get the server to run the CGI from your HTML page you also have to do one of the following:

* Title the page with a .shtml extension (e.g., hello.shtml), OR
* Add this line to the .htaccess file that goes at the top level of your website (same level as your index.html file):
o AddHandler server-parsed .html

If you don't already have an .htaccess file, then create one and have the AddHandler bit be the only line.

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Everyone who has a website wants it to rank high in the search engines like Google and Yahoo.

If the phrase(s) you're trying to rank well for aren't competitive (that is, few other sites are using the same phrase) then getting good placement is pretty easy: Just put the phrase(s) you want to rank well for in the tag and in at least one other area on the page. For some reason this isn't obvious to everyone: I can't remember how many times someone has sought my advice about how to rank well for some phrase, and I check out their page and that phrase is nowhere to be found! A while back a friend asked me how to get her homepage to rank well for her name, which was unusual enough that she should have been at the top of Google with no problems. After I checked out her page I felt like asking her, "And it didn't occur to you to put your name somewhere on that page?!" Actually, her name was on her page, but in a graphic. Google can't read that, they have no idea what words are contained in an image. And her tag for each page that accurately describes that page (no more than about 64 characters).
* Try to create two new pages every week. If you can't do that, try to do one page each week. At a bare minimum, create a new page each month.
* As much as possible, your new pages should be unique, interesting, authoritative, and compelling.If you want to rank well for the phrase electric widgets, then make your site the best resource about electric widgets available.
* Make sure all of your pages are accessible through normal links (i.e., don't use JavaScript or Flash links exclusively).
* Link to quality relevant sites. After you do so, ask those sites to link to you, but don't make your link to them contingent on whether they link back.
* Follow standard website design tips and avoid the problems listed on Problem Websites. Your site should be not only attractive, but super-easy to use, and completely free of annoyances.
* Most importantly, purge your mind of trying to think of ways you can "trick" your way to the top of the results. Do NOT think about the specific nuts and bolts of how a search engine will rank your pages. Instead, build good, quality pages for your visitors, and trust that the rankings will follow.

But many webmasters don't get this. They write to me asking such things as:

* How many times should my keywords appear on my pages?
* What's the optimum ratio of keywords to non-keywords?
* Should I seek links from several PR4 sites or one PR6 site?
* Will doing "X" cause me to rank higher?

Such webmasters are missing the point. You get good rankings by building a quality site, not by trying to figure out exactly how the search engines rank pages. It's counter-intuitive, but you get good rankings by ignoring rankings and focusing on quality. Focus on quality and the rankings will follow. It works the same way in business: If you focus on the money you'll probably make less money. But if you focus on creating a great customer experience then the money will follow.

But many of you came here hoping to find tricks, so before you dismiss that, consider this: Your site doesn't rank as well as mine, otherwise you wouldn't be here. You want your site to rank better, which is why you went looking for this article. And my site does rank well, which is why you found it. In other words, I know what I'm talking about. My sites are all over Google and Yahoo for a variety of popular terms. When I tell you the best way to get good rankings is to ignore rankings and focus on building your site, it's not just theoretical, and it's not a cop-out: It works, and it works well.

But maybe you figure that you don't have time to build a quality site, so that's why you want some easy tricks. In that case, your site doesn't deserve to rank well. And don't be surprised when it doesn't. If you want better rankings, you must make your site worthy of those rankings. Look at the sites that are beating you. Assuming you already have good