When you say you cannot connect - do you get the connection then the user authentication fails or you just don't get the connection?
As for getting Apache to return html files from the cgi-bin directory - this is kind of nullafied by having cgi files anywhere in Apache's document tree as you no-longer use the cgi-bin dir!!
If you want to be able to execute the .cgi files anywhere you need to add the 'ExecCGI' option to the 'options' line for for '/' directory in httpd.conf. Look for the line that reads <directory /> and add it to the options under there. If you want you can add a second options line that reads
but remember the + as others wise you will enable ExecCGI and disable all the other options. This often catches people out! You must either specify all the options you want in one 'options' statement OR use the + sign...
It's probably worth mentioning that executing cgi files anywhere in a server can be a security issue... but if its just a 'home' server then I wouldn't worry! If you are experiementing with CGI also have a look at PHP -
http://www.php.net - as you've probably gathered from this forum you can do some nice things with it
HTH
Jamie...
