bjames
Heliman
Location: Singapore
| yapjy,
"cgi" ---> "common gateway interface" is a generic method to enable dynamic page generation (and processing) on the web server. Traditional web servers serve only static pages (e.g. HTML files), but with cgi you are able to "execute/run" programs on the web server that generates the web page on the fly.
The actual programs used for cgi processing varies, it can be a traditional C/C++ program, it can be a Perl script, Phyton script, shell script, PHP, etc, and the actual CGI programs actually built the web page using various dynamic parameters (mainly by getting something from a database).
The most popular CGI programs these days is written in Perl so this is the most commonly supported. But if the web hosting does not say it, then you need to ask though. Anyway, whatever you can do with Perl you can always do in PHP (see below).
"php" ---> (www.php.net) refers to the ability for you to write scripts in PHP language (www.php.net). It's basically a C-like language you embed inside the HTML pages and you can use it to do various processing, such as storing/retrieving data from database, perfoming login/authentication, etc. PHP is actually one of methods to do "cgi" (as above), but it has the advantage that you don't need to write a lot of printf statements to output the static HTML portion (e.g in all HTML files you always need to write ...).
Instead, you write HTML pages as per normal, then you write the server side script on a special blocks. So you can split the work into 2 parts: designing the static portion of the page (layouts, graphics, etc etc), then just add the dynamic portion (e.g. generating "hello username") later as necessary. Most of the website hosting these days offers php, if they don't then forget them :-)
"mysql" ---> (www.mysql.com) is the name of an open-source SQL database. It's the most popular open-source database for use with web applications because:
a) it's free (you can't beat the price :-))
b) it's fast
but it lacks various complex SQL constructs such as transactions, stored procedures, triggers, etc, which is not used in most web applications anyway (except you're writing online banking). If the web hosting offers "mysql" it means it's providing you with an SQL database that you can use together with your cgi / php.
"pgsql" (www.postgresql.org) is another open-source SQL database. It's the 2nd most popular open-source database (some people would argue it's the MOST popular but let's stick to the statistics :-) ), it offers very complete functionality that can be compared to commercial databases like Oracle/DB2 however it's a bit slower.
For practical purposes, it does not make a difference whether you make use of mysql or pgsql --- you just need to ensure that the software package that you use supports mysql or pgsql (and mysql definitely is a win here).
"shell" refers to the terminal-type access to the machine. Basically it means that you can do telnet/ssh to the web-server machine and do your maintenance from there (e.g. remove files, rename, etc etc) but more than that it allows you to run scheduled jobs (e.g. clean-up temporary files every day at 12am). "Shell" is the most powerful access you can get, but it's only useful if you have the previous ones.
As for linking a website, the general view is divided into 2 camps.
a) first camp says you'll have to get permission from the website owner first, because of intellectual properly blablablablah.
b) second camp says linking is the same as if giving directions to others on how to reach the linked website, hence no permission needed: by having a web-presence it implicitly gives anyone the right to link to their site.
c) my opinion is like this:
c1) it's ok to link as long as you just provide a simple text link (website/company name)
c2) don't make use of any artwork/graphics from the linked website unless you have the permission (or the website explicitly says you can use their artwork to link)
c3) don't make use of any other graphics to point to the linked site (unless it's "stylized-text" graphics), as the company/website may already have their own preferred graphics for linking,
c4) you do the linking in good faith
but hey, I'm not a lawyer so can't say whether my opinion can be held in courts ;-), having said that I practice what I say 
Okay, that's helicopter-point-of-view-from-300-feet answers. Some details are not exactly correct (e.g. mysql actually supports transaction BUT you need to get version 4.0.x or higher and only on certain table-type) --- but you get the idea.
irq,
for the offer does the resulting website must be heli related or can it be anything else 
cheers, |
