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.

 

wwwboard Permission
bbs dir	chmod 755
bbs/messages	chmod 755
bbs/index.sht	chmod 666
bbs/data	chmod 666
cgi-bin/wwwboard.pl	chmod 755

Guestbook Permission
Guestbook dir	chmod 755
Guestbook/guestbook.cgi	chmod 755
Guestbook/guestbook.setup	chmod 666
Guestbook/guestbook.html	chmod 666

Free for all Links Permission
links dir	chmod 755
links/links.htm	chmod 666
cgi-bin/links.pl	chmod 755

Graphic Counter Permission
counter dir	chmod 775
counter/logs	chmod 777
counter/ all other files	chmod 666
cgi-bin/counter	chmod 755

Cgi-bin always chmod 755 all scripts chmod 755 in main bin
cgi-bin/counters (text counter)	chmod 755

Random Text
random dir	chmod 775
random/random.txt	chmod 666

Password Admin
password dir	chmod 755
All password files	chmod 666

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://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 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@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 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://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 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://
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">

Formmail authors instructions

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.

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. 

Return  to Main Index          Go To Top of Page

 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 many different computers, each of which have a different machine name. To find out what machine name to use for your secure order access calls, check the faq file of your domain at: 
http://www.yourdomain.com/faq.html 

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://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@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 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.

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 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 
(<ahref="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 &