Online Manual - Section 4

The CGI Scripts provided for you are basically self-contained. There is little, if anything, that needs to be done to them to make them operate.  The complicated part for most users trying to add cgi scripts is file paths and permissions.  Even experienced programmers and webmasters struggle at times to properly configure cgi programs. If you are a Novice User with limited knowledge in this area, it is strongly recommended that you first become highly proficient with HTML and web page creation before attempting to do this yourself. 

Adding CGI Scripts 
We provide many CGI scripts with your account which you will find in a directory called cgi-bin.   We do not provide free support for CGI scripts which we do not install on your server, so if you wish to add new CGI scripts you may want to do a bit of research on them first unless you are familiar with them already. Adding new scripts requires a more advanced knowledge of programming terms and skills and is not generally recommended for Novice Users.

If you are an experienced user, (or a novice who myopically decides to install your own scripts) you can access more technical cgi information in the Advanced User section of this manual.

CGI Script Resources
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 there. Another excellent resource is The CGI Resource Index found at http://www.cgi-perl.com/   Unless you are an expert on the subject, you should look for scripts that are very well documented and come with step-by-step instructions.  You may contact us for help or installation.

Where to Put CGI-bin Scripts
Put your cgi-bin scripts in the www subdirectory named "cgi-bin". 

Quick Guidelines For Using SSI's
No! We are not talking about a Social Security Income check from uncle Sam!  SSI stands for Server Side Include... and it means that you can insert the contents of another web page, program or file into the web page that adds the Server Side Include.

A couple of important points you need to follow for SSI to work on your domain.
1.   The web page that adds the SSI instruction to include another page or program MUST end with .shtml or .sht rather than .html or .htm. 
2.  The URL to the page you want to insert must be relative to the current web page rather than a full URL.

The SSI feature on your domain is limited to what is known as a "exec cgi command". This simply means that you can insert into any page the ability to execute any cgi program. The format for a Server Side Include is:
<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/THE-PROGRAM-NAME-HERE.cgi"-->

One quick observation... do you notice how this SSI instruction uses a *relative* URL (/cgi-bin/....) instead of a FULL URL? This is very important to keep in mind when using SSI.

For example, let's say we want to include a counter program (that has the name, counter.cgi) on our home page, called normally index.html.  Remember! Because we want to add a SSI instruction in our home page, it must end with .shtml or .sht. In this case, we would name it index.shtml.

The counter program is named counter.cgi, and like all cgi programs, this program is found in the cgi-bin directory of your domain. 

So the SSI instruction to include on your web page, where you want the counter to be displayed is:
<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/counter.cgi"-->

Permission Settings for Provided Scripts
All of the cgi scripts provided as part of your domain have been setup and configured properly.  As mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult tasks of dealing with CGI programs is correct settings of file permissions.  Listed below are the default permission settings for the installed CGI programs.

When you want to use a cgi script or program in secure mode, you
must change the URL to follow this format:
https://machine.safe-order.net/cgi-domain/script.cgi

Machine - that is the machine name that is hosting your domain.
cgi-domain - replace the word domain with your domain name.
script.cgi - use the name of the cgi script located in your cgi-bin directory.
For nph-style scripts, use nph-cgiwrap or nph-cgiwrapd instead. 

This section contains all of the information you need to create your web pages for use with the CGI scripts we provide for you as part of your account. These scripts are recommended for users with Advanced knowledge and experience with HTML and web page creation.

NOTE: Due to the width restrictions of this page some code strings appear broken. Do NOT duplicate the breaks. Enter code strings in one continual line.

FormMail.
This 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 functional options, most of which can be specified through the form. This means you don’t need any programming knowledge, nor do you need multiple scripts for multiple forms. This also makes FormMail the perfect system wide solution for allowing users form-based user feedback capabilities without the risks of allowing freedom of CGI access.

Note: If you wish to use FormMail on a secure server please see the special instructions here.

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, 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://yourdomainname.org/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi">
 <input type=hidden name="recipient" value="whoever@yourdomainname.org">
 <input type=hidden name="subject" value="Order">
 <input type=hidden name="return_link_url" value="http://yourdomainname.org/">
 <input type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to Main Page">

 The following are descriptions and the proper syntax for fields you can use with FormMail.

Recipient Field 
Description:. This form field allows you to specify to whom your form results will 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@yourdomainname.org">

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 the 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, it is strongly suggested that you include this form. 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://yourdomainname.org/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 you would like 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 email 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://
yourdomainname.org/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. 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.

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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.

To do this, create your form as usual and put it somewhere in your html 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.yourdomainname.org/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://machinename.safe-order.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."

To call scripts in your cgi-bin via the secure server you should use a URL like this:
 https://machinename.safe-order.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://machinename.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://machinename.safe-order.net/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi">
 <input type=hidden name="recipient" value="whoever@yourdomainname.org">
 <input type=hidden name="subject" value="Order">
 <input type=hidden name="return_link_url" value="http://yourdomainname.org/">
 <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 for it to work properly. You must use:
https://machinename.safe-order.net/yourdomain/order.htm. 
If you call formmail.cgi through the secure server, you must also call the order form through the secure server. Otherwise, a "bad referrer" message will result.

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. The 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.yourdomainname.org/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 html 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!

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://yourdomainname.org/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 result. pages. 

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Virtual Publisher Counter (on qualifying accounts only).
 Another page counter you may want to use is the Virtual Publisher Counter (on qualifying accounts only). It is another graphical counter, but it will give you all kinds of stats such as time and date of visits, and domains that your visitors come from.

To put this counter on your page, insert the following tag somewhere... please note that the line had to be broken up to fit on this page, but the line should not be broken on your page. 

 <img src="http://yourdomainname.org/cgibin/counter/counter.cgi?
fnam=testcount&viz=yes&isinv=yes&setup=/home/www/
yourdomain/cgi-bin/counter/setup.txt">

 Where you see fnam=testcount, put in the name of the page you want to put the counter on instead of the word testcount. The viz=yes part tells the counter script whether your counter should be invisible or not. If you want the counter to be visible, leave it as yes. If you want it to be invisible, make it say viz=no. 

 The isinv=yes part is for whether you want the counter to be inverted or not. The default as below means that it is inverted (as shown in the graphic above). If you wish for it to be just a black number against a white background, make it say isinv=no. 

Another great thing about this one is that you can access the log files for each page you have the counter on, and also reset the count to any number you wish. To see the instruction page, go to http://yourdomainname.org/counter/   with your web browser.

 Please be aware that a count file will not be created until a page is accessed for the first time.

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Text-based Counter
Finally, the simplest kind of page counter is a text-based counter. It uses SSI so the page you are putting it on must have the .sht, .shtm, or .shtml extension. It will look like whatever text and size attributes you give it on your page. The tag looks like this:

 <!--#exec cgi="/cgi-yourdomain/counters/counter.cgi"--> 

 After you've put the counter on your page, look at it with your browser. If you don't see the counter the first time, hit reload. Then you should see the number 1. If you want to change the page count, FTP to your site, and look in the counters directory in your cgi-bin. There will be a file there with the name of whatever page you placed this counter on. Just upload a new text file with a new number on it, and that will be the new count on the page next time you hit reload. Remember to upload the file in ASCII or text format.

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