- CGI-bin
Applications
- Where
to Put CGI-bin
Scripts
Paths
to Date, Mail, Perl,
etc.
Setting
Permissions
Quick
guidlines on using
SSI's
Troubleshooting
CGI-bin Problems
- Permissions
on scripts we install
- Preconfigured
CGI-bin Scripts We Provide:
- Formmail.cgi
Cgiemail
Secure
Server Order Forms
Guestbook
Free-for-All
Links Page
Random
Text Generator
WWW
Board
Search.cgi
Database
Single
Page Shopping Cart
Page
Counters
CGI-bin
Applications
CGI
stands for "Common Gateway Inferface," a fancy name
meaning computer programs running on the webserver
that can be invoked from a www page at the browser.
The "bin" part alludes to the binary executables that
result from compiled or assembled programs. It is a
bit misleading because cgi's can also be Unix shell
scripts or interpreted languages like Perl. CGI
scripts need to be saved in ASCII format and uploaded
to your server's cgi-bin in ASCII or text format. This
is very important.
We
don't provide free support for CGI scripts which we
did not install on your server. So if you are not
already familiar with CGI scripting, you may want to
read a book on the subject or find places on the
Internet with CGI scripting information. There are
many good resources for CGI scripts found on the web.
The scripts at Matt's Script Archive found at
http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/ are very good.
Many of our scripts come from here. Another excellent
resource is The CGI Resource Index found at
http://www.cgi-perl.com/ -- if you are not an expert,
look for scripts that are very well documented and
come with step-by-step instructions, or contact us for
help or installation.
Where
to Put CGI-bin Scripts
Put
your cgi-bin scripts in the www subdirectory named
"cgi-bin".
Paths
to Date, Mail, Perl, etc.
Here
are your paths to the common server resources that CGI
scripts often require:
|
Sendmail:
|
/usr/bin/sendmail
|
|
Perl5.004:
|
/usr/bin/perl
|
|
Date:
|
/bin/date
|
|
Java:
|
/usr/bin/java
|
|
Domain
path:
|
/home/userid/www
|
|
|
|
|
Cgi-bin
path:
|
(puts you in your web directory)
/home/userid/www/cgi-bin
|
|
|
|
|
|
(puts you in your cgi-bin)
|
Setting
Permissions
The
following is a simple explanation of file permissions
in Unix. To list the access permissions of a file or
directory, telnet to your server, then:
cd
directoryname
to
change the directory until you are either in the
directory above the file you are interested in, or
above the directory you are checking.
Type:
ls -l filename
and
you will see what the current permission settings are
for that file, along with a bunch of other stuff.
Examples
of using chmod:
|
PEOPLE
|
PERMISSIONS
|
|
u
= the file's user (you)
|
r
= read access
|
|
g
= the file's group
|
x
= execute access
|
|
o
= others
|
w
= write access
|
|
a
= the user, the group, and others
|
|
To
change permissions for a file named filename.cgi, you
need to chmod the file (change mode). For example,
when you type this:
chmod
u=rwx,g=rx,o=rx filename.cgi
you've
given:
read,
execute, and write access to the user (that's
you)
read
and execute access to the group and
read
and execute access to others
Some
scripts will tell you to chmod 775 (for example).
Doing the above is the same thing as typing chmod 775.
You can use either method with our Unix servers. Let
me explain:
When
using the numeric system, the code for permissions is
as follows:
r
= 4 w = 2 x = 1 rwx = 7
The
first 7 of our chmod775 tells Unix to change the
user's permissions to rxw (because r=4 + w=2 + x=1
adds up to 7. The second 7 applies to the group, and
the last number 5, refers to others
(4+1=5).
When
doing an ls -l on the file, telnet always shows the
permissions this way:
-rwxr-xr-x
Ignore
the first dash, then break up the above into three
groups of letters. If there's a dash where a letter
should be, it means that there is no permission for
those people.
Remember:
the first 3 apply to user, the second 3 apply to
group, and the third 3 apply to others.
Some
FTP clients support changing permissions in a more
graphical way. If you have Fetch for the Mac, you have
an easy way to change permissions. Go to the file you
want to change the permissions on, and highlight it.
Under the Remote menu, select Change Permissions. A
window will pop up showing the current permissions for
the file you had highlighted, as in Figure 3A
below. Click on the boxes to change permissions as
needed.
Figure
3A
WS_FTP
accomplishes the same task as above. Just highlight
the file you want to check, and right-click on it. A
menu will pop up, then select CHMOD. You will see the
window below, as in Figure 3B.
Figure
3B
Troubleshooting
CGI-bin Problems
Below
are solutions to some of the more common CGI script
problems, in question and answer format. You will find
a list of proper permission settings for the scripts
we provide at the end.
When
I activate my CGI program, I get back a page that says
"Internal Server Error. The server encountered an
internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to
complete your request."
This
is generally caused by a problem within the script.
Log in via Telnet and test your script in local mode
to get a better idea of what the problem is. To do
this, go into the directory in which your script is
located, then execute the script. To execute the
script, you can do it by two ways:
1)
Type "perl myscript.pl" (Perl being the language
interpreter in this case).
2)
Or simply type "myscript.pl" alone, that will work if
the first line is well written to indicate the
location of Perl.
The
first one is useful to see if there's any error IN
your script. The second one is useful to test if your
"calling line" (the first line of the script) is okay,
i.e. if you entered the right location of Perl.
I
am being told "File Not Found," or "No Such File or
Directory."
Upload
your Perl or CGI script in ASCII mode, not binary
mode.
When
I test my Perl script in local mode (by Telnet), I
have the following error: "Literal @domain now
requires backslash at myscript.pl line 3, within
string. Execution of myscript.pl aborted due to
compilation errors."
This
is caused by a misinterpretation by Perl. You see, the
"@" sign has a special meaning in Perl; it identifies
an array (a table of elements). Since it cannot find
the array named domain, it generates an error. You
should place a backslash (\) before the "@" symbol to
tell Perl to see it as a regular symbol, as in an
email address.
I
am getting the message "POST not implemented."
You
are probably using the wrong reference for cgiemail.
Use the reference /cgi-bin/cgiemail/mail.txt. Another
possibility is that you are pointing to a cgi-bin
script that you have not put in your cgi-bin
directory. In general, this message really means that
the web server is not recognizing the cgi-bin script
you are calling as a program. It thinks it is a
regular text file.
It's
saying I don't have permission to access /
This
error message means that you are missing your
index.htm file. Note that files that start with a "."
are hidden files. To see them, type ls -al. If you
wish to FTP this file in, go to the home/yourdomain
directory.
Appendix
Permission
Settings for the scripts provided
|
|
Normal
Site
|
Frontpage
Site
|
|
wwwboard
|
|
bbs
dir
|
chmod
777
|
chmod
777
|
|
bbs/messages
|
chmod
777
|
chmod
777
|
|
bbs/index.sht
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
bbs/data
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
cgi-bin/wwwboard.pl
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
755
|
|
Guestbook
|
|
Guestbook
dir
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
777
|
|
Guestbook/guestbook.cgi
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
755
|
|
Guestbook/guestbook.setup
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
Guestbook/guestbook.html
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
Free
for all Links
|
|
links
dir
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
777
|
|
links/links.htm
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
cgi-bin/links.pl
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
755
|
|
Graphic
Counter
|
|
counter
dir
|
chmod
775
|
chmod
777
|
|
counter/logs
|
chmod
777
|
chmod
777
|
|
counter/
all other files
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
cgi-bin/counter
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
755
|
|
Cgi-bin
always chmod 755 all scripts chmod 755 in
main bin
|
|
cgi-bin/counters
(text counter)
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
777
|
|
Random
Text
|
|
random
dir
|
chmod
775
|
chmod
777
|
|
random/random.txt
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
|
Password
Admin
|
|
password
dir
|
chmod
755
|
chmod
777
|
|
All
password files
|
chmod
666
|
chmod
666
|
Preconfigured
CGI-bin Scripts We Provide
Formmail.cgi
The
script is one from Matt's Script Archive which we have
installed and preconfigured for your domain. FormMail
is a generic www form to e-mail gateway, which will
parse the results of any form and send them to the
specified user. This script has many formatting and
operational options, most of which can be specified
through the form, meaning you don't need any
programming knowledge or multiple scripts for multiple
forms. This also makes FormMail the perfect
system-wise solution for allowing users form-based
user feedback capabilities without the risks of
allowing freedom of CGI access.
There
is only one form field that you must have in your
form, for FormMail to work correctly. This is the
recipient field. Other hidden configuration fields can
also be used to enhance the operation of FormMail on
your site. The action of your form needs to point
towards this script (obviously), and the method must
be POST in capital letters.
Here's
an example of the form fields to put in your form:
<FORM
METHOD=POST
ACTION="http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi">
<input
type=hidden name="recipient"
value="whoever@yourdomain.com">
<input
type=hidden name="subject"
value="Order">
<input
type=hidden name="return_link_url"
value="http://yourdomain.com/">
<input
type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to
Main Page">
The
following are descriptions and proper syntax for
fields you can use with FormMail.
Recipient
Field
Description:
This form field allows you to specify to whom you wish
for your form results to be mailed. Most likely you
will want to configure this option as a hidden form
field with a value equal to that of your email
address.
Syntax:
<input type=hidden name="recipient"
value="email@yourdomain.com">
Subject
Field
Description:
The subject field will allow you to specify the
subject that you wish to appear in the email that is
sent to you after this form has been filled out. If
you do not have this option turned on, then the script
will default to a message subject: "WWW Form
Submission".
Syntax:
If you wish to choose what the subject is:
<input
type=hidden name="subject" value="Your Subject">
To
allow the user to choose a subject:
<input
type=text name="subject">
Email
Field
Description:
This form field will allow the user to specify their
return email address. If you want to be able to return
e-mail to your user, I strongly suggest that you
include this form field and allow them to fill it in.
This will be put into the From: field of the message
you receive. If you want to require an email address
with valid syntax, add this field name to the
'required' field.
Syntax:
<input type=text name="email">
Realname
Field
Description:
The realname form field will allow the user to input
their real name. This field is useful for
identification purposes and will also be put into the
From: line of your message header.
Syntax:
<input type=text name="realname">
Redirect
Field
Description:
If you wish to redirect the user to a different URL,
rather than having them see the default response to
the fill-out form, you can use this hidden variable to
send them to a pre-made HTML page.
Syntax:
To choose the URL they will end up at:
<input
type=hidden name="redirect"
value="http://yourdomain.com/to/file.html">
To
allow them to specify a URL they wish to travel to
once the form is filled out:
<input
type=text name="redirect">
Required
Field
Description:
You can require certain fields in your form to be
filled in before the user can successfully submit the
form. Simply place all field names that you want to be
mandatory into this field, separated by commas. If the
required fields are not filled in, the user will be
notified of what they need to fill in, and a link back
to the form they just submitted will be provided.
To
use a customized error page, see
'missing_fields_redirect'
Syntax:
If you want to require that they fill in the email and
phone fields in your form, so that you can reach them
once you have received the mail, use the syntax
like:
<input
type=hidden name="required"
value="email,phone">
Env_report
Field
Description:
Allows you to have Environment variables included in
the email message you receive after a user has filled
out your form. Useful if you wish to know what browser
they were using, what domain they were coming from or
any other attributes associated with environment
variables. The following is a short list of valid
environment variables that might be useful:
REMOTE_HOST
- Sends the hostname making the
request.
REMOTE_ADDR
- Sends the IP address of the remote
host.
HTTP_USER_AGENT
- The browser the client is using.
(Note:
In our case, both REMOTE_HOST and REMOTE_ADDR are the
same, since our servers don't do the reverse DNS
lookup needed to generate the true REMOTE_HOST
string).
Syntax:
If you wanted to find all the above variables, you
would put the following into your form:
<input
type=hidden name="env_report"
value="REMOTE_HOST,REMOTE_ADDR,HTTP_USER_AGENT">
Sort
Field
Description:
This field allows you to choose the order in which you
wish for your variables to appear in the email form
that FormMail generates. You can choose to have the
field sorted alphabetically or specify a set order in
which you want the fields to appear in your mail
message. By leaving this field out, the order will
simply default to the order in which the browsers send
the information to the script (which is usually the
exact same order as they appeared in the form). When
sorting by a set order of fields, you should include
the phrase "order:" as the first part of your value
for the sort field, and then follow that with the
field names you want to be listed in the email
message, separated by commas.
Syntax:
To sort alphabetically:
<input
type=hidden name="sort" value="alphabetic">
To
sort by a set field order:
<input
type=hidden name="sort"
value="order:name1,name2,etc...">
Print_config
Field
Description:
print_config allows you to specify which of the config
variables you would like to have printed in your
e-mail message. By default, no config fields are
printed to your email. This is because the important
form fields, like email, subject, etc. are included in
the header of the message. However some users have
asked for this option so they can have these fields
printed in the body of the message. The config fields
that you wish to have printed should be in the value
attribute of your input tag separated by commas.
Syntax:
If you want to print the email and subject fields in
the body of your message, you would place the
following form tag:
<input
type=hidden name="print config" value="email,
subject">
Print_blank_fields
Field
Description:
print_blank_fields allows you to request that all form
fields are printed in the return HTML, regardless of
whether or not they were filled in. FormMail defaults
to turning this off, so that unused form fields aren't
emailed.
Syntax:
<input type=hidden name="print_blank_fields"
value="1">
Title
Field
Description:
This form field allows you to specify the title and
header that will appear on the resulting page if you
do not specify a redirect URL.
Syntax:
If you wanted a title of 'Feedback Form Results':
<input
type=hidden name="title" value="Feedback Form
Results">
Return_link_url
Field
Description:
This field allows you to specify a URL that will
appear, as return_link_title, on the following report
page. This field will not be used if you have the
redirect field set, but it is useful if you allow the
user to receive the report on the following page, but
want to offer them a way to get back to your main
page.
Syntax:
<input type=hidden name="return_link_url"
value="http://yourdomain.com/index.htm">
Return_link_title
Description:
This is the title that will be used to link the user
back to the page you specify with return_link_url. The
two fields will be shown on the resulting form page
as:
Back
to Main Page
Syntax:
<input type=hidden name="return_link_title"
value="Back to Main Page">
Cgiemail
Cgiemail
is another form processing script, totally different
than FormMail, discussed above. It is a program
written in the C language that takes the contents of
fill-in boxes on a form and emails them to a specified
location. In addition to the form specification in the
.html file, a mail specification in a .txt file is
required to format the resulting email message.
We
provide the cgiemail in the cgi-bin directory of your
server. You need to have an action in your order.htm
file to call it. It should look like this:
<form
method=post
action="http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/cgiemail/order.txt">
Details
are provided below. While there are a number of
subsections below this one, they all work together and
are meant to be read from start to finish.
order.htm
Look
for a file in your www directory called order.htm.
This is our example form we put on your site that
shows how a form should be configured to work with
Cgiemail. Look at it in a browser, and download it to
your hard drive using FTP so you can see how it works.
If you've never dealt with HTML forms before, don't
worry, they're easy to create and understand.
The
form prompts the user for data which is sent to the
server as simple key-value pairs. Each <input>
tag specifies a record. The key is given by the
name attribute, and the value is given by the
value attribute. The type attribute
tells the browser what kind of data to expect. Now,
try looking at the example.
Please
note that the hidden items are used to transmit
critical info to Cgiemail. They provide the location
of the success file, the name of the person the
results should be sent to, and the subject of the
form. When making your own forms, you may want to
change the email address in the "required-to" field,
and likely the subject in the "subject" field. The
first item tells Cgiemail what to show the user after
successfully completing the form. You can, but don't
need to customize this.
After
that come the items that are actually presented to the
user. You'll want to use type=text input items with
cgiemail: it's a simple tool. The size=60 tells the
browser how big to make the box. The name=something is
required in each input tag, otherwise the browser
wouldn't know how to send the data to the server. The
value=" " attribute is correct in most cases, unless
you want a default value in the form.
Note
that if a field begins with required-, cgiemail will
require that the user enter a value for this field.
This is particularly useful if you want to require a
user to submit their email address.
When
the user presses the Submit button, the data goes to
our machine where cgiemail starts doing something with
it. What is does is controlled by the order.txt file
discussed below.
By
the way, you can name your HTML form anything you want
to.
order.txt
Now
that we have all this data, what do we do with it?
Mail it, of course! But for flexibility, cgiemail
requires that you create a mail.txt file to show it
what to send. (If you didn't want flexibility you'd
use a mailto link.) The program will read this file,
perform substitutions, and pass it to the mail
system.
Make
sure that you upload mail.txt in ASCII mode. Failure
to upload mail.txt in ASCII mode will generate the
message:
"Server
Error: The server encountered an internal error or
misconfiguration and was unable to complete your
request."
There
is already an example order.txt document in the forms
directory in your www directory.
By
the way, there's nothing magical about the name
order.txt. Feel free to call it mail1.txt or
form1.mail, or whatever suits you, as long as the form
has the correct name for what you uploaded.
Note
that the first several lines are mail headers. You
probably shouldn't change that part, or the
corresponding parts in your form. In particular, there
must be a To: header or the mail won't go
anywhere!
What
cgiemail does is simply replace every string that
looks like [key] with the value the user typed
into the field with name=key. That's all. You can lay
out your form as is best for your users, but lay out
your mail.txt as is best for you to read. You can even
insert gobs of text to help format the output. Only
the [key] parts will be replaced by
cgiemail.
Cgiemail
does not report environmental variables like FormMail
will, but other than that, it is an excellent program,
allowing you more flexibility in the way you want your
data returned by the form.
Secure
Server Order Forms
Normally,
any text (such as your credit card number) sent from
your browser to the web server is sent as plain text.
This means that a hacker could potentially intercept
(however unlikely) the information sent from your
browser and read it. However, by using the secure
server, the information is encrypted before it is sent
from your browser. It would be practically impossible
for anyone to decrypt it without knowing the key.
Please use the secure server only when necessary, as
when requesting sensitive information from your
visitors.
The
domains hosted by us are housed on any number of
computers and all of them have a different machine
name. To find out what machine name to use for your
secure order access calls, check with our
support
technicians.
Each
server has its own safe-order site, and although you
will be putting your form on your own domain, it must
be called through the safe-order server in order for
the form to be secure.
To
do this, create your form as usual and put it
somewhere in your www directory. You can put your form
anywhere you want to, but for this example, let's
assume the normal URL for your form can be accessed
from a browser with this URL:
http://www.yourdomain.com/signup/secureform.html
To
call the form through the secure-order server, you
need to use the following URL to access your pages via
the secure server (even though your form resides on
your own domain space):
https://name.server.net/yourdomain/signup/secureform.html.
That
would be the URL you would put as an <HREF> to
link to your form from whatever page you have your
visitors link from. Don't forget the "s" in
"https."
Your
cgi-bin dir is:
https://name.server.net/cgi-yourdomain/your-cgi.cgi
-------------------------------------
Special
instructions for using FormMail.cgi with the Secure
Server
If
you are using formmail.cgi through the secure server,
you can still place your form anywhere on your
webspace you want to, but you MUST use the following
URL as the ACTION of your form:
https://hercules.safe-order.net/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi
Here's
an example of how the first parts of your form might
look:
<FORM
METHOD=POST
ACTION="https://name.server.net/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi">
<input
type=hidden name="recipient"
value="whoever@yourdomain.com">
<input
type=hidden name="subject"
value="Order">
<input
type=hidden name="return_link_url"
value="http://yourdomain.com/">
<input
type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to
Main Page">
It
is still important that you call your order page
through a secure URL in order to work properly. For
example:
https://name.server.net/yourdomain/order.htm.
Guestbook
Guestbook
allows you to set up your own comments page. From
there, visitors can add entries to your guestbook and
they will be displayed with the most recent at the top
and scrolling down, or vice versa. Other options
include the ability to limit HTML in the entry, link
to e-mail address with mailto tag, use a log to log
entries, redirect to a different page after signing,
emailing whenever a new entry is added, and much
more.
Guestbook
is already set up for use on your server. You can
simply use the following URL to access it:
http://yourdomain.com/Guestbook/guestbook.html
If
you want to change any of the configuration options,
locate the guestbook.cgi file in your Guestbook
directory (inside your www directory). Download it to
your hard drive in ASCII mode, and save it somewhere
safe. Create a copy of the file and give it the same
name, then edit the options as specified below. Keep
your backup of the original guestbook.cgi in case you
run into problems.
Option
1: $mail
This
option will allow you to be notified via an E-mail
address when a new entry arrives in your guestbook.
The entry will be mailed to you as a notification. If
you should choose to turn this variable on you will
need to fill in the 2 variables that go along with
it:
$recipient
- Your email address, so that the mailing program will
know who to mail the entry to.
$mailprog
- The location of your sendmail program on your host
machine.
Option
2: $uselog
This
will allow you the ability to use the short log
feature. It is already turned on so you will have to
change it to 0 if you do not wish to use it. It has
been implemented since there are probably many people
who feel no need to have a log when people are making
entries to a file anyway. Keep in mind that it will
show errors which is one nice aspect about it.
Option
3: $linkmail
Turning
this option on will make the address links in your
guestbook become hyperlinked. So instead of simply
having (name@some.host) it will put (<a
href="mailto:name@some.host">name@somehost</a>
so that anyone can simply click on the address to
email them.
Option
4: $separator
This
allows you to choose whether you want guestbook
entries to be separated by a Paragraph Separator
<p>, or a Horizontal Rule <hr>. By
changing the 0 in the script to a 1, you will turn on
the <hr> separator and turn off the <p>
separator. The 0 option will do the reverse of that;
turn on the <p> and turn off the <hr>.
Option
5: $redirection
By
choosing 1 you will enable auto redirection and 0 will
return a page to the user telling them their entry has
been received and click here to get back to the
guestbook.
Option
6: $entry_order
Set
this option to 0 and the newest entries will be added
below the rest of the entries. Keep this option at 1
and the guestbook will add the newest entries at the
top.
Option
7: $remote_mail
Many
users of the guestbook have requested that a form
letter be automatically sent to the remote user when
they fill in the guestbook. Turning this option on
will tell the script to automatically mail any user
who leaves an email address. You can specify the
contents of the mail message by editing the section of
the script that sends mail to the remote user. By
default it sends a message that says, "Thank you for
adding to my guestbook." and then shows them their
entry. If you should choose to turn this variable on,
you will need to fill in the 2 variables that go along
with it:
$recipient
- Your email address so that the mailing program will
know who to mail the entry to.
$mailprog
- The location of your sendmail program on your host
machine.
Option
8: $allow_html
This
option allows you to turn on or off the use of HTML
tags by users of your guestbook. Setting this variable
to 1 allows users to embed html tags such as <b>
or <H1> or <a href=" "></a> into
your html document. Setting this variable to 0 will
not allow them to use any html syntax in their
comments or any other field. You can still link to
their comments or any other field. You can still link
to their email address by turning $link_mail to 1.
There
is also the ability for users to add their own URL and
then their name is referenced to their URL in the
guestbook.html file. This helps to eliminate the need
for allow_html to be turned on, and lets users point
you to a spot that will tell you more about them.
Several users of the guestbook script have asked for
this option. If you wish to disable the option, simply
delete the following line from your addguest.html
file:
URL:
<input type=text name=url size=50><br>
These
are the rest of the important guestbook files found in
your Guestbook directory:
guestbook.html
This
is the file that you will link to that will contain
the Guestbook Entries. You may want to edit the title
and heading spaces and customize the look any way you
desire. Do not delete the line <!--begin--> from
this guestbook, or else the script will have no way of
knowing where to begin the editing. The
<!--begin--> line is the only necessary line in
your guestbook.html file, but the link to the
addguest.html file is also a good idea. :-)
Free-For-All
Links Page
Free
For All Link Page allows you to set up a web page
which your users can then add links to in specified
categories. Newest links are added to the top of each
category. A running total of the number of links
present as well as the time when the last link was
added is shown at the top of the page. Your
preconfigured Free For All Links page is already set
up on your server at
http://www.yourdomain.com/links/links.htm. The only
configuration you may want to do is to customize the
look of the links.htm page. Just leave the method and
input tags the way they are. If you decide to change
the category names, you must do so in the links.htm
document, AS WELL AS the links.pl file in your
cgi-bin.
Random
Text Generator
This
script is preconfigured for your server. There is a
directory in your www directory called "random."
Inside that directory is a file called random.txt.
Just download this file to your hard drive and edit it
with any random text you would like placed in an html
document. Remember to keep the %% separator between
quotes. You can use any html formatting tags you want
to, including <href> tags so you can configure
it as a random link generator. You can put in as many
quotes as you wish. Upload the random.txt file to your
server in the same location you found it, remembering
to upload it in ASCII or text mode.
The
script uses SSI (Server Side Includes) so the page you
want to use random text on must have the .sht, .shtm,
or .shtml extension. On your page, just put this tag
wherever you want the random text to appear:
<!--#exec
cgi="/cgi-bin/randomtext.cgi"-->
That's
all there is to it!
WWW
Board
WWW
Board is a threaded World Wide Web discussion forum
and message board, which allows users to post new
messages, follow-up to existing ones and more. It is
already preconfigured for your server. Just go to
http://www.yourdomain.com/bbs to post your messages
there.
There
are several options you may want to configure. First
of all, the index.sht file in the bbs directory can be
customized any way you wish as long as you leave the
method and input tags the way they are.
Additionally,
here are some options contained in the wwwboard.pl
script itself (located in your cgi-bin directory)
which you may want to change, depending on your
needs:
$show_faq
= 1;
This
option allows you to choose whether or not you want to
display a link to the FAQ on every individual message
page or not. It defaults to 1 and the link will be put
in at the top of the message along with links to
Followups, Post Followup and Back to $title. Setting
this to 0 will turn it off, and keeping it at 1 will
keep the link. You need to create a faq.html file and
put it inside the bbs directory. The FAQ can contain
any information you want to give your visitors about
how the board works, your organization, types of
postings that will be allowed, etc.
$allow_html
= 1;
This
option lets you choose whether or not you want to
allow HTML mark-up in your posts. If you do not want
to allow it, then everything that a user submits that
has <>'s around it will be cut out of the
message. Setting this option to 1 will allow HTML in
the posts and you can turn this option off by setting
it to 0.
$quote_text
= 1;
By
keeping this option set to 1, the previous message
will be quoted in the followup text input box. The
quoted text will have a ':' placed in front of it so
you can distinguish what had been said in the previous
posts from what the current poster is trying to get
across. Setting this option to 0 will leave the
followup text box empty for the new poster.
$subject_line
= 0;
There
are three options for the way that you can display the
subject line for the user posting a followup. Leaving
this option at 0 which is the default value, will put
the previous subject line into the followup form and
allow users to edit the subject however they like.
Setting this option to 1, however, will quote the
subject, but simply display it to the user, not
allowing him or her to edit the subject line. The
third and final option can be achieved by setting the
$subject_line variable to 2. If it is set to 2, the
subject will not be quoted and instead the user will
be prompted with an empty subject block in their
followup subject line.
$use_time
= 1;
This
option allows you to choose whether or not you want to
use the hour:minute:second time with the
day/month/year time on the main page. Day/Month/Year
will automatically be placed on the main wwwboard.html
page when a new entry is added, but if you leave this
variable at 1, the hour:minute:second time will also
be put there. This is very useful for message boards
that get a lot of posts, but if you would like to save
space on your main page, you can set this to 0,
causing the hour:minute:second display not to be
added.
Search.cgi
Search
will look at all your html pages for words you enter,
and return all pages on a list with links. This
program is completely configured and ready to run, but
for Search.cgi to return a response, it need to be
activated. This is easily done by logging in via
telnet and at the prompt after login type the
following command:
chmod
+r /www/yourdomain
Now
you can access search.cgi with the following URL:
http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi.
There
is a configuration file called search_define.pl which
accompanies search.cgi and sets up the variables for
it. You can customize which files you wish to exclude
from searches, and also the cosmetics of the search
and results pages.
Database
(This
is no longer available HTMLSCRIPT should be looked at
as a alternative)
The
database is composed of 5 essential files:
database.cfg, database, post.html, search.html, and
output.html. These are located in the directory called
"database" in your www directory. They are already set
up to run a simple database, but you can customize
them to meet your needs.
database.cfg
This
is the configuration file for your database. You need
to make sure your Unix permissions are set to chmod
666 for this file to work properly.
The
first line is the location of the database, which has
the default value of our text database.
The
second line is what page it should return to after
posting to database; the default value is to return to
the post page for another entry.
The
third line is where you will start listing any fields
you want to have posted to the database. For
example:
name
url
address
city
state
zip
You
may have as many as you like listed for these fields.
These become your input fields and they must be
associated with the input statements on your post.html
for each of the ones you want to use. You should have
a matching input statement that looks like the
following on your post.html page (note "name" and
"address" are for example and can be changed with
whatever field you wish to use, also the size
attribute can be whatever you want):
<input=text
name="name" size="25">
<input=text
name="address" size=30">
database
This
is nothing more than the actual data being stored
after it is posted from your post.html page.
post.html
This
page is used to write to the database from a webpage.
You should have an input statement for each field used
in the database.cfg file. You may also use query boxes
or radio buttons. The method tag needs to remain the
same as the one already on your server, but the rest
of it can be configured as you want.
If
you want to activate the email feature, add the
following tag to your form:
<input
type="hidden" name="email" value="your email
address">
When
active, each time someone posts to the database you
will receive an email of the content.
search.html
This
is the page that reads the actual database file based
on the criteria you would like to search. This can
also be customized to meet your requirements, in
keeping with the fields you set up above.
output.html
You
must make sure the Unix permissions are set to chmod
666 for this file to work properly.
Each
field you want printed in the output page is enclosed
in [brackets]. These may be laid out anywhere
on the page -- this effectively becomes a printout
template for your file. You may surround these
variables with as much normal text as you would like
to have printed with these records.
Single
Page Shopping Cart (on qualifying accounts
only)
There
should be a Single Page Shopping Cart program
installed on your server. You can see what it looks
like by going to this URL with your browser:
http://www.yourdomain.com/shop/boutique.html
If
you want to customize the shopping cart, (and you will
if you want to sell products using this program), you
can visit:
http://virtualpublisher.com/host4u/index.html
The
Virtual Publisher Shopping Cart program is
sophisticated and complex. Rather than reprint all
their directions here, please go to their website and
download the help files associated with it.
If
the Single Page Shopping Cart program wasn't installed
on your server and you want it, please send us email
and we'll make sure it's installed right away!
Page
Counters
There
are 3 different types of page counters you can place
on your pages. The first is a no-frills graphical
counter which looks like this:
To
use this one, put the following tag somewhere on your
page, but change the yourpage.htm to be the address of
the actual page you are putting this counter on. Also,
don't break up the tag like we did. We had to do that
to fit it on the page. The width=5 part refers to how
many digits you want in your counter.
This counter is not as reliable as the others
mentioned.
<IMG
SRC="/cgi-bin/nph-count?width=5&link=http://yourdomain/yourpage.htm">
