These days lot of discussions are going on superiority of ‘Softaculous over Fantastico. As Softaculous covers more recent updates it is more favorite of not only the webmasters as a consumers but also of many web hosting companies as providers. As Softaculous has 150 scripts which are dehighlighting the Fantastico which has near about 50 only.
I would like to share some important features of ‘Softaculous’ which keeps it much ahead in the race with ‘Fantastico’
- Has much more scripts than Fantastico
- More User friendly than Fantastico
- Less time consuming Installation
- Ability to Import scripts which are already manually installed
- Ability to install Javascript Libraries
- Ratings from the users who already have used by others are viewable.
- Ability to take backup of applications
- Overwrite option for already existing files.
As a statement from Softaculous, they will keep on adding more software applications into their catalog. Currently shared hosting owners are redirecting to Softaculous on a very large scale.
When you choose the good hosting companies and go through the 
details of he packages you will definitely get this option i.e. CGI Scripting. Hosting companies understand the need of the clients.
CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. It is a standard for creating web pages. CGI scripts are popular it actually refers to writing a program that will control how the websites content is displayed to the visitors.
When you talk about the CGI Scripts there are some basic things that you should look at. In CGI Scripting there is a basic mode of the web communications is Client server mode. To access a web page, the client computer communicates with the server computer and when the server responds then it can access the data i.e. files and the downloads. As you are aware that the website and all its elements are kept on the server and the server sends the information to the client as needed and requested.
The client initiates the request to the server with some information and server responds back with it, this is how the web servers handle static files. However depending upon the website owner he may want a request to go through to the several steps before granting the access to the static files. For example he may want the user to be a paid member to view a file. This requires an executable program which directs the server to implement the steps needed to perform the intended feature. This is where the CGI Scripting comes into picture.
In short we can say that it is standard protocol for interfacing external application software with the information server i.e. a web server. The server responds in two ways:
- If the request is for a file stored, returns the content.
- If the request identifies an executable command, then it runs the command and then returns the output.
For the second option the CGI defines the standard way of doing it.
There is one problem in using the CGI Scripts, every time the script is executed a new process is started. For Busy websites this can considerably slow down the server.
Fantastico Scripts are executed when websites are created, or when new application is added to an existing website. Actually it is a system which is designed to install scripts easily. The biggest advantage is that it integrates with the popularly used Cpanel which offers hosting customers variety of things which include installation of popular programs and scripts with ease of a just single click on a button.
The scripts that Fantastico installs creates tables in databases, installs softwares, modifies permissions and configuration files too. It normally targets Open source softwares, it also installs some proprietary softwares. More than Fifty applications are associated with Fantastico
Fantastico is a program which is developed keeping non-technical user in consideration, while more technical person showed interest in it who dont wish to waste time manually configuring many installation.It can be great a choice when you think of nistalling something like blog. It supports Wordpress and Nucleus.
Fantastico is included freely in Hosting packages for the custmers.Cutomers love the variety of software available with Fantastico. It is availabe with Linux Hosting packages only.
You can not expect a disadvantage from such a wonderfull software,however lets face it.
Customers depend upon the hosting provider and the Fantastico makers to update the Scripts collection on a periodic basis.Due to ths reason some scripts run Out of date or open to exploits,however the customers need not worry.
Customers should just contact support and request for the latest stable version of fantastico.
