one question, you mentioned making the cgi-bin directory in my website’s document root with this command:

mkdir -p cgi-bin

I’ve already made a cgi-bin directory one directory before my website directory, this is where I have the python script I run to make my google sitemap. Is this where I should be putting the files, or does it go into my website root?

I remember hearing somewhere that putting certain files in a webspace would be a security risk.

brent

How in the world do you survive without a custom php.ini? I run dreamhost as well and heres how to get running in 3 minutes. First, login via ssh cd to your websites document root and then run these commands.

1. mkdir -p cgi-bin
2. cp -rp /dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi .
3. cp -rp /etc/php5/cgi/php.ini .

Now add this to your root .htaccess

AddHandler php-cgi .php .htm
Action php-cgi /cgi-bin/php5.cgi

Ok? Good now you can do everything I talk about.

The problem is that I can’t get to php.ini since I’m on a shared host (dreamhost) they run php as cgi.

I put these lines in the beginning of all the files and it seems to have worked,

header('Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8');

but it’d be much nicer to use .htaccess or just have it declared once somewhere instead of on every file.

brent

Another possibility is a small one but maybe its the problem. Apache serves ErrorDocuments by default using iso, the same can be said for Apache-generated directory index pages. Depending on the version of Apache you are using, you can change this.

No this will not work for PHP. Only static files. The reason is because this is simply telling Apache to handle these files using the handler for them, while php files have their own handler, the php interpreter or cgi.

So to get the charset correct for php files you need to modify your php.ini like so.

default_mimetype = "text/html"
default_charset = "UTF-8"