CGI

Stands for "Common Gateway Interface." CGI is a set of rules for running programs on a web server. Whenever you submit information, like search terms or your login and password, to a web server, there's a good chance that the server is using a CGI script to receive and process the data. However, with new scripting languages such as PHP, ASP, and JSP attracting many web programmers, CGI scripts aren't as popular as they once were.