Ok fixed it.
The problem was that I followed the directions <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> , which said to name the cgi directory "cgi-bin". On my server, scripts can run from anywhere, except cgi-bin, which is reserved. Changed the name to something else, fixed the cplinks.html path, and voila.
Phew.