in reply to General Guidence

The answer to #1 is using meta-tags. It's been 5 years since I did anything like that, but that's what you want to look for.

As for #3, the reason is scalability - you want to use a database once your performance degrades. Using a piped text file is good for, generally, under 1000 records in under 10 tables. Get beyond that and you really want to go to a relational database. It's worth the time and effort to learn how to use them, as you'll find yourself using them over and over in your programming career.

In addition, a RDBMS will help with your security questions, too. :)

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Re: Re: General Guidence
by Legg83 (Novice) on Jul 17, 2001 at 00:29 UTC
    Thanks.

    For the redirection, I was hoping that there would be some sort of operator that would redirect the user, instead of having to load a blank html page which would redirect the user.
[reply]
      Think about it this way - the browser has to get something to know to do something. That something has to be HTML, JAVA, or something similar. Generally, what people do is create a page containing "You are being redirected to XYZ URL. This should take place in 5 seconds." That way, they know they're being redirected.

      Anything else beyond that, like what happens at Yahoo or whatever, needs to be done at the HTTP server level, which is out of my league.

[reply]
        Anything else beyond that, like what happens at Yahoo or whatever, needs to be done at the HTTP server level, which is out of my league.
        I don't believe this is true. Sending HTTP headers is very simple, especially using the CGI module. It's also more reliable than HTML meta tags.
        I highly recommend you browse the HTTP spec at HTTP SPEC. It's a bit dry, but it will teach you volumes about how CGI works. Then, the redirect method of CGI.pm will make perfect sense.
[reply]
[d/l]

      Set the "Location" header in the HTTP headers:

      Location: http//www.redirect-targetsite.com/;
[reply]
[d/l]

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