  Extending Internet Services using CGI and ISAPI applications
You can extend your site's functionality and make it more dynamic by adding scripting capabilities. Internet Services supports two types of scripting applications:
• Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
• Internet Services API (ISAPI).
In both cases, you must have any scripting language (for example, Perl or PHP), in which you create and run an application, already loaded on your machine.
There are three things you must do to use both types of applications in FirstClass:
• create an application
• place the application in the appropriate place on your hard disk (cgi-bin folder)
• add a link to the application, to access it, on any HTML document on your web site.
Note
CGI and ISAPI scripts are discussed only as they relate to FirstClass. There is no discussion of how to develop applications in any scripting language.
The cgi-bin folder
You must place all CGI or ISAPI scripts in the cgi-bin folder for them to work. The cgi-bin folder (an external folder) is located in the same folder as the Internet Services executable and is not created by default, so you must create it. You can also have subfolders separating scripts into different categories, depending on the complexity of the script. Also, if you have two scripts with the same name, you must place them in different subfolders within the cgi-bin folder.
Internet Services also supports a cgi-win folder for executables that conform to the WinCGI protocol (for example, Visual Basic applications). The cgi-win folder is also an external folder that is not created by default, so you must create it in the same location as the cgi-bin folder. Since this folder exists on your Internet Services machine, not in the Internet Services folder on the administrator’s Desktop, only a user with access to your physical machine can add or remove executables.
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