Using Python on Hostmonster, Umbrahosting And Other General Shared Hosting

I’ve a hostmonster and umbrahosting shared hosting where my sites are running smoothly in PHP. I’m perfectly happy with both UmbraHosting and HostMonster. Additionally both the hosting providers have Python support. Being a Python enthusiast, I decided to check out.

On both Hostmonster and Umbrahosting, you can execute Python scripts as CGI scripts. But you must take care of these points:

— They must be placed inside the cgi-bin directory.
— Permission should be 755. (777 triggered server error for me)

I didn’t find the latest version of Python anywhere on these two hosts. Let alone Python 2.5, they have Python 2.4. 🙁 But still I’m happy that I can run Python. The only thing that I didn’t like was the obligation to put my scripts in the cgi-bin directory. So, I couldn’t have URLs like https://masnun.com/hello.py 🙁

Later today afternoon, an idea clicke in my mind. Can’t I target a subdomain to the cgi-bin directory? The answer is: YES! Just use a .htaccess file to map certain urls to your cgi-bin directory.

Putting the .htaccess in your domain’s root directory will allow you to put a python file inside your cgi-bin directory and visit it from http://example.com/example.py 😀