Scripts FAQ's

1. How do I install the Search Engine?   2. Any other tips if I can't get a script to work?   3. How do I install scripts from Matt's Script Archive?   4. Scripts supplied on the server   5. How do I use the counter?   6. How do I use FormMail?   7. Why am I getting a 403 Forbidden Error?   8. How do I set permissions from the   9 How can I troubleshoot an "Internal Server Error"?   10 Where do I put scripts?   11. What perl modules are installed?   12. What are the basics of installing scripts?   13. What are the paths to Perl, Sendmail etc?   14. I am getting an "Internal Server Error" when I try to use a script. What is wrong?   15. How do I set permissions with WS_FTP?   16. How do I set permissions with CuteFTP?   17. Chmod? R-W-X? 1.  How do I install the Site Search Engine?- Top         Click on setup search engine, here you will be able to edit the look and feel of the search results template, then just copy the provided html to implement the site search on your page Or click on Rebuild Search Index to index or reindex your site Insert the html into your page and search away .      2.  Any other tips if I can't get a script to work? - Top         Tips for CGI Installations Read the documentation for the script you are trying to install! If you don't find any documentation WITH the script, check inside the script ITSELF, some scripts have the instructions written in with the coding. If you can't find any help, contact the author of the script (most scripts have the author's information in the header of the script) Make sure you have properly set any permissions for the file (most scripts require CHMOD 755, or read-execute permission to properly execute on the server) Make sure you have properly set all paths and parameters! Make sure (if it's a Perl script) you transferred it as an ASCII file (Perl scripts are text files [ASCII] not binary files like some compiled CGI scripts!)          3.  How do I install scripts from Matt's Script Archive?- Top          We DO NOT provide technical support for these scripts. We have included some general information regarding these scripts. If you need additional support outside of what we have provided, please refer to Matt's Archives for more detailed information. 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. You can obtain the guestbook script and its other necessary files from Matt's CGI Archives site as well. You can change several of the configuration options by downloading the guestbook.cgi file from Matt's to your hard drive. 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 (name@somehost 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 , or a Horizontal Rule . By changing the 0 in the script to a 1, you will turn on the separator and turn off the  separator. The 0 option will do the reverse of that; turn on the  and turn off the . 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 or  or  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: The other file included with the guestbook is called: 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 from this guestbook, or else the script will have no way of knowing where to begin the editing. The  line is the only necessary line in your guestbook.html file, but the link to the addguest.html file is also a good idea. :-)  Back to the top 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.br> Back to the top Random Text Generator 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  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: That's all there is to it! Back to the top 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. 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 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 Follow-ups, Post Follow-up 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 follow-up 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 follow-up 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 follow-up. Leaving this option at 0 which is the default value, will put the previous subject line into the follow-up 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 follow-up 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. Back to the top Search.cgi Search will look at all your html pages for words you enter, and return all pages on a list with links. This script should be uploaded to your cgi-bin, and for Search.cgi to return a response, it needs 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. Quick guidelines on using SSI's Your domain is capable of supporting use of SSI's, support is limited to the exec cgi command and in order for the system to process the include you must save the page with a .shtml or .sht rather than .htm or .html. Sample SSI: Please note as shown in the example above, the URL must be relative and not a full call, this would not work: Back to the top Permission Settings for scripts: Type: Normal Site: Frontpage Site: WWWBoard: bbs dir bbs/messages bbs/index.sht bbs/data cgi-bin/wwwboard.pl chmod777 chmod777 chmod666 chmod666 chmod755 chmod777 chmod777 chmod666 chmod666 chmod755 Guestbook: Guestbook dir Guestbook/guestbook.cgi Guestbook/guestbook.setup Guestbook/guestbook.html chmod755 chmod755 chmod666 chmod666 chmod755 chmod777 chmod666 chmod666 Free For All Links: links dir links/links.htm cgi-bin/links.pl chmod755 chmod666 chmod755 chmod777 chmod666 chmod755 Graphic Counter: counter dir counter/logs counter/ all other files cgi-bin/counter chmod775 chmod777 chmod666 chmod755 chmod777 chmod777 chmod666 chmod755 Cgi-bin always chmod 755 all scripts chmod 755 in main bin cgi-bin/counters (text counter) chmod755 chmod777 Random Text: random dir random/random.txt chmod775 chmod666 chmod777 chmod666 Password Admin: password dir All password files chmod755 chmod666 chmod777 chmod666       5.  How do I use the counter? -Top         This option within your Control Panel will allow you to install a counter on your web pages. Once installed you can edit the number of hits and the style of the counter itself. We will not provide much information on the use of this option here, as your Control Panel will provide complete step-by-step instructions for setting up this feature within the Counters option itself.       6.  How do I use FormMail?- Top         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. For complete instructions on using Formmail, please go to your your control panel at http://www.yourdomain.com:2082/ and choose the Formmail option.         7.  Why am I getting a 403 Forbidden Error?- Top          A 403 Forbidden error occurs when the web server finds itself with insufficient permissions to run your script. Make sure you have given the script proper permissions. In SSH, this is accomplished with: chmod 755 scriptname.cgi If you are uploading via FTP, your FTP client probably has some facility for setting file permissions. You want to make sure that all choices (user, group, and other) have execute permission.          8.  How do I set permissions from the - Top         Go to your Control Panel and click on "File Manager". You will now see a list of directories within the root of your account. Since all of your html files and subdirectories are uploaded and created within your www directory you need to click on the directory labeled "www". Once inside your www folder, you will see the first column is the  Permissions Column, click on the link pertaining to the directory or file that you wish to set the settings for and the Permissions screen will open. Permission Definitions ------------------------------------------- Owner = the files users (you) Group = the files group Others = others Permissions Definitions: r = read access x = execute access w = write access Numerical Definitions: r = 4 x = 2 w = 1 You will come to recognize, if you do not already, Chmod as a word used for changing Permissions from within Telnet or your FTP client. Some scripts will tell you to chmod 775 (for example). When using the numeric system, the code for permissions is as follows: 4 + 2 + 1 (rwx) = 7 The first number applies to Owner, the second number applies to Group, and the third number applies to Others. Therefore the first 7 of the chmod 775 tells Unix to change the Owner's permissions to rxw (because r=4 + w=2 + x=1 adds up to 7, this giving the Owner Read, Write, and Execute Permission. The second 7 applies to the group, this giving the Group Read, Write, and Execute Permission, and the last number 5, refers to Others (4 + 1= 5), giving Others only Read and Execute Permission. The permissions for chmod 775 look like this: rwx rwx -rx. Permissions are always broken up into three groups of letters, however if there is a dash, this dash simply means that Permission wasn't given for that particular function, for example in the chmod 775, Permission to Write was not given to Others. Remember: the first 3 letters always apply to Owner, the second 3 apply to Group, and the third 3 apply to Others.          9.  How can I troubleshoot an "Internal Server Error"?- Top          Log in to your account with SSH and test your script. To do this, go into the directory in which your script is located, then execute the script. simply type "myscript.pl"          10.  Where do I put scripts?- Top          You may place your scripts in any directory you'd like within the "www" directory, but you will stay better organized if you place them in the subdirectory named "cgi-bin".         11.  What perl modules are installed?- Top         CGI.pm-2.42 DBI-0.93 GD-1.18 HTML-Parser-2.18 MD5-1.7 MIME-Base64-2.05 Msql-Mysql-modules-1.1831 (this is the module that allows perl to communicate with msql and mysql) ParallelUserAgent-2.31 libnet-1.0605 libwww-perl-5.33          12.  What are the basics of installing scripts?- Top          1) Be sure the file permissions are set correctly on the cgi that you are trying to run start with 755, or if it needs to write to itself, 777 2) Always upload and download a cgi in ASCII transfer mode.          13.  What are the paths to Perl, Sendmail etc?- Top         Sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail Perl (incuding Perl5.004): /usr/bin/perl Date: /bin/date Java: /usr/bin/java Python: /usr/bin/python Domain path: /home/userID/public_html Cgi-bin path: /home/userID/public_html/cgi-bin        14.  I am getting an "Internal Server Error" when I try to use a script. What is wrong?- Top          Although this is generally caused by a problem within the script, many times it is caused by incorrect file permissions either on the script itself, or another file or directory used by the script. You should also verify the that the script paths are set correctly. You should verify that the first line of your script is the path to Perl, and that it is correct. It should be set to: #!/usr/local/bin/perl You should also verify that the scripts were uploaded in the correct mode (ASCII or Binary - check the readme for the scripts to see any special instructions. Normally it is ASCII)          15.  How do I set permissions with WS_FTP?- Top         Just highlight the file you want to set, and right-click on it. A menu will pop up, then select CHMOD         16.  How do I set permissions with CuteFTP?- Top          From the menu bar of CuteFTP, select "View / Long Listing" Then select "View / File details" and be sure that "Show file attributes" is checked and you will see what the current permission settings are for that file, along with a bunch of other stuff if you have other details selected for viewing:        17.  Chmod? R-W-X?- Top         PEOPLE u = the file's user (you) g = the file's group o = others a = the user, the group, and others PERMISSIONS r = read access x = execute access w = write access Some scripts will tell you to chmod 775 (for example). 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 chmod 775 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). Thus, 775 gives read/write/execute to owner and group, and read/execute to public   Back  to Top