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Notes & Reference

What's CGI stand for?
Where to Put CGI-Bin Scripts
Paths to Perl and other Programs
Setting Permissions
Cgiwrap - Secure Server CGI Wrapper
Preconfigured, Preinstalled Scripts
    Bulletin Boards (Forums)
    Cgiemail Form
    Click and Go Redirection
    Formmail
    Free-for-All Links Page
    Page Counters
         Graphical Page Counters
         Text-Based Page Counter (uses SSI)
    Postcards
    Quiz Master
    Random Text Generator
    Secure Server Order Forms
    Site Searches
         PageSearch
         Perlfect Search
         SFE PageSearch
         Simple Site Search
    That's An Order Shopping Cart
    VisitorBook Pro Guestbooks
    Vote/Survey
    Whois Script
Permissions on Preinstalled Scripts
How to Test Your CGI Scripts Using Telnet
Troubleshooting CGI-Bin Problems
Notice

What's CGI stand for?
CGI stands for "Common Gateway Interface," referring to computer programs running on the web server 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 CGIs 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 (text) format. This is very important.

We don't provide free support for CGI scripts that we did not install. So, if you are not already familiar with CGI scripting, you may want to read a book on the subject or refer to our Tips and Tutorials section.

Where to Put CGI-Bin Scripts
Put your CGI-bin scripts in the www subdirectory named "cgi-bin." If you prefer to put your scripts elsewhere, you can as long as the name ends with .cgi.

Paths to Perl and Other Programs
Here are your paths to the common server resources that CGI scripts often require:

Setting Permissions
Your file permissions are usually correct when you upload files, but sometimes permissions are not established for Group and Other, resulting in a "server error" message when trying to access your page.

NOTE: Every time you re-upload and overwrite the existing file, its file permissions stay the same.

Permissions Defined
Permissions are defined as "read", "write" and "execute". There are three levels of access: Owner, Group and Other. Unix allows users to be placed in Groups so that the control of access is made simpler for administrators.

Read permission allows you to view the contents of a file. For a directory, having read permission allows you to list the directory's contents.

Write permission allows you to modify the contents of the file. For a directory, write permission allows you to alter the contents of the directory (i.e., to add or delete files).

Execute permission allows you to run the file if it is an executable program or script. Execute permission is irrelevant for nonexecutable files.

To List or Change File/Directory Permissions
The fastest and simplest way to list or change file and directory permissions is to use your Web Control Panel. To access it, go to http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/plusmail. Once logged-in, select "Site Manager," then click a folder or file icon to view related properties and set permissions.

You can also use Telnet or FTP.

1. Using Telnet:

   To list the current permissions of a file or directory, type "ls –l <filename or directory>" at the shell prompt. Telnet always displays permissions as non-numeric characters, such as the following:

   –rwxr–xr–x

   "r" refers to Read; "w" refers to Write; "x" refers to Execute; and "–" refers to no permission. Each character equals a number:

   r = 4
   w = 2
   x = 1
   – = 0

   You have probably seen permissions identified as 755, 775, 666, etc. To convert the non-numeric characters to a numeric format, ignore the first hyphen, then make three groups of three characters each. The first three characters apply to Owner, the second three to Group, and the last three to Other (Everyone). Using our example above, the character groups would look like the following:

   Owner
   rwx

   Group
   r–x

   Other (Everyone)
   r–x

   As mentioned above, each character equals a number. Add the numbers for each party (Owner, Group, and Other) together:

   Owner
   4+2+1=7

   Group
   4+0+1=5

   Other (Everyone)
   4+0+1=5

   The permission "–rwxr–xr–x" is the same as "755". Owner has Read, Write and Execute privileges while Group and Other have Read and Execute privileges only.

   To change your permissions, at the shell prompt type "chmod xxx <filename or directory>", where "xxx" is the permission number and "<filename or directory>" is the filename or directory to be changed.

2. Using FTP:

   In WS_FTP just highlight the file you want to change permissions on and right-click on it. A menu will pop-up, then select CHMOD. You will see the window below (Figure 3A).

   
   Figure 3A

   Fetch accomplishes the same task. 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 highlighted, as in Figure 3B below. Click on the boxes to change permissions as needed.

   
   Figure 3B

Cgiwrap - Secure Server CGI Wrapper
We have a cgi wrapper for the secure server called cgiwrap. We have configured it to be automatically invoked when you make a call containing "cgi-domain", like this:

https://YourMachineName.safe-order.net/cgi-YourDomainName/script.cgi

You can call cgiwrap explicitly with the following call, which does the same thing as the above call:

https://YourMachineName.safe-order.net/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/YourDomainName/script.cgi

This assumes script.cgi is in your cgi-bin. You can also use cgiwrapd in place of cgiwrap to get extra debugging information if there is a problem. For nph-style scripts, use nph-cgiwrap or nph-cgiwrapd instead.

Preconfigured, Preinstalled Scripts

Bulletin Boards (Forums)
To setup your discussion forums, just go to http://www.yourdomain.com/forums/cgi-s

Once you have created your forum, access it by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/forums/name_of_your_forum

These forums are completely configurable.

If you need to re-install this script, login to your Web Control Panel, select Free Scripts, then select Multi User Forums.

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"></form>

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 put on your site to show 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 e-mail 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. This form is customizable.

Next are the items that are actually presented to the user. You'll want to use type=text input items with cgiemail; it's a simple method. 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 e-mail address.

When the user presses the Submit button, the data goes to our server where cgiemail starts processing it. What it does is controlled by the order.txt file discussed below.

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 an order.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 order.txt in ASCII mode. Failure to upload order.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 as name=key. That's all. You can lay out your form as is best for your users, but lay out your order.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 does, but other than that, it is an excellent program, allowing you more flexibility in the way your data can be returned by the form.

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/clickgo.cgi">
<select name="goto" size="1">
<option value="www.yourdomain.com">Home</option>
<option value="www.yourdomain.com/contact.html">Contact Us</option>
</select>
<input type="submit" value="GO!">
</form>

Replace "yourdomain.com" with your domain address. The only other things you will modify are the option values. The values in " " are the hyperlink addresses of where that option will take your visitor. You can add as many options as you like.

Below is what the script looks like after it is set up:

Home Contact Us

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 refer to the location of the script, and the method used must be "POST", expressed 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">
</form>

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 your e-mail 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 e-mail 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 entitled, "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">

E-mail Field
Description: This form field will allow the user to specify their return e-mail address. If you want to be able to return e-mail to your user, you should 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 e-mail address with valid syntax, add this field name to the "required" field (see below).

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 premade 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 (no spaces in between). 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.

Syntax: To require that they fill in the e-mail and phone fields in your form: <input type=hidden name="required" value="email,phone">

Env_report Field
Description: Allows you to have environment variables included in the e-mail message you receive after a user has filled out your form. This is 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:

REMOTE_HOST—Sends the hostname making the request
REMOTE_ADDR—Sends the IP address of the remote host
HTTP_USER_AGENT—Identifies the browser the client is using

NOTE: In our case, REMOTE_HOST and REMOTE_ADDR are the same, since our servers do not perform the reverse DNS lookup needed to generate the true REMOTE_HOST string.

Syntax: To determine all the above variables: <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 your variables will appear in the e-mail form that Formmail generates. You can choose to have the field sorted alphabetically or specify a set order in which the fields will 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 fields into a specific order, 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 e-mail message, separated by commas.

Syntax: To sort alphabetically: <input type=hidden name="sort" value="alphabetic">

To sort into a specific 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 will be printed in your e-mail message. By default, no config fields are printed to your e-mail. This is because the important form fields, like e-mail, 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.

Print_blank_fields Field
Description: Print_blank_fields allows you to request that all form fields be printed in the return HTML, regardless of whether they were filled in. Formmail defaults to turning this off, so that unused form fields aren't e-mailed.

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: To specify a title of "Feedback Form Results", you would include the following form tag: <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">

Free-For-All Links Page
Free-For-All-Links 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 change 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 in the links.pl file in your cgi-bin.

If you need to re-install this script, login to your Web Control Panel, select Free Scripts, then select Pro Links page.

To use this one, put the following tag somewhere on your page, but change the yourpage.htm to the address of the actual page you are putting this counter on. The width=5 part refers to the number of digits in your counter. This counter is not as reliable as the others mentioned.

The second is the Virtual Publisher Counter (Not available on accounts established after June 1999). 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 came from, etc. It looks like this:

To put this counter on your page, insert the following tag somewhere. In your code, the tag should occupy one line, with no spaces in between any of the characters.

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

Where you see fnam=testcount, replace "testcount" with the name of the page you want to put the counter on. 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, change it to "no."

The "isinv=yes" lets you choose whether you want the counter to be inverted (white against black background) or not. If you want the number to be black against a white background, change it to 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://yourdomain.com/counter/

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

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

Replace "/your_cgi-bin" with the relative path to your cgi-bin from the page where you place the counter.

After you've placed the counter on your page, look at it with your browser. If you don't see the counter the first time, hit reload or refresh. 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 the page you placed this counter on. Edit this file - change the starting number and re-upload the file (in ASCII format). Once the file is re-uploaded, hit reload or refresh to reset the number.