CGI

CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface and basically means any kind of program that runs on a webserver. Typically a CGI produces an HTML page as output, but may also produce an image (say a PNG or JPEG), or any other kind of file a webserver might serve.

A PHP is a kind of CGI (though typically may have a more "intimate" connection and different setup on a server than other more traditional CGI languages like PERL or Python). For a very particular task or maximum performance, a CGI might even be a binary executable written in C and compiled on the server.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface
• http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3875.txt
• http://www.w3.org/CGI/

• Yahoo Listing of CGI scripts circa 1997 (via wayback)

Python CGI Checklist