Extras: Dynamic Pages
But what about the Web pages that are dynamic? For example:
- Any guest book allows you to enter a message in an HTML form, and the next time the guest book is viewed, the page will contain the new entry.
- The whois form at Network Solutions allows you to enter a domain name on a form, and the page returned is different depending on the domain name entered.
- Any search engine lets you enter keywords on an HTML form, and then it dynamically creates a page based on the keywords you enter.
In all of these cases, the Web server is not simply "looking up a file." It is actually processing information and generating a page based on the specifics of the query. In almost all cases, the Web server is using something called CGI scripts to accomplish this feat. CGI scripts are a topic unto themselves, and are described in the HowStuffWorks article How CGI Scripting Work.
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For more information on Web servers and related topics, check out the links below.
Related HowStuffWorks Articles
- How Internet Infrastructure Works
- How Domain Name Servers Work
- Web Server Quiz
- How ASPs Work
- How E-mail Works
- How File Sharing Works
- How Internet Cookies Work
- How Network Address Translation Works
- How CGI Scripting Works
- Where are all the Internet domain names registered and maintained?
- Why do some Web sites include "www" in the URL while others don't?