You need a web space of your own. Most free hosting companies don't offer a cgi-bin. Here are two of them, at this writing that do have a free cgi-bin:
http://www.hypermart.com
http://www.webjump.com
But the problem with free hosting is they put lot of ads on your pages. Your customer think you are not a reliable merchant when they visit your free site. So it is better to go for a paid hosting service. Also, free hosting companies sometimes fold, and when
they do, your free pages disappear along with them.
Look for the following things in a web hosting company:
1. Capability of running your own cgi scripts.They should provide you a cgi-bin. Some times you have to create it by yourself on some servers. Sometimes you can run the scripts from any of your directories. So ask your system administrator when you don't see the cgi-bin directory as they promised in their advertising.
2. Support for SSI along with cgi capability.
3. Telnet access: It is very easy to debug the cgi scripts if you have telnet access.
Some system administrators provide the access if you ask them for 1-2 days and disable it because of server security problems.
Cgi can run on any platform. The majority of the scripts available mention 'for Unix' only. Not that the scripts don't run on other servers like Windows NT and Linux etc. But they may need little bit of customization or they are not tested on other servers other than Unix.
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