How do I make my website able to receive e-mails. Do I need a special cgi?

CGI is a stone-age. It is problematic from the performance and other standpoints; it is also awkward in development and support, at least — in many applications. There are much better technologies readily available.

You can use one of server-side technologies, such as ASP.NET, PHP (very rudimentary but on of the most popular), Python with with WSGI (I mean, better be not used CGI style), Iron Python, Iron Ruby — you name it. Many of these technologies are readily available. In case of Apache, they are available in the form of Apache "modules", such as "mod_mono" (for ASP.NET based on Mono platform), "mod_php", etc.

On the client-side, you can have just a Web form using the HTTP method "post". It should have all input fields needed to make e-mail addresses, other headers, options and message contents. You server side should get the request, analyze post data (extra care needed: this data should never be used as is but thoroughly analyzed for sanity, otherwise hacking your server to make is a zombie sending spam could be accomplished in a matter of minutes!) and actually sends the message from the server side.

You can find plenty of code samples on the Web, but you should decide on the server-side technology to use.

—SA