Etips is a publication of:
Your Guide to Professional Web
Site Design and Development
Hello,
Welcome to this week's edition of Etips.
In last week's edition of Etips, Kevin Nunley provided you with some great
information to assist you in making a good site great. (If you missed it,
you can find it in the
archive.)
One of his suggestions was to add an email form to your site. In today's
Etips, we're going to focus on installing a form processing script on your
server and adding an email form to your site.
I hope you'll enjoy this week's edition of Etips.
To Your Success!
 How to Install a CGI Script
and Increase Web Site Interactivity
By
Herman Drost
You may have delayed cgi script
installation due to the apparently complex process. Well, I avoided also
it for several years; however, if you want to increase your web site's
interactivity, it's a necessity to know how to do it. It's not hard to learn
and you don't have to be a programmer.
What is CGI ?
Common Gateway Interface or CGI is a program that can interact with an html
form on your web site and processes the results on your server using a cgi
script. The result generated is a dynamic web page. The cgi script is written
in a language called PERL ("practical extraction and reporting language").
Uses of CGI scripts
CGI scripts are most commonly used for creating user interaction with an
html form on your web site. Other uses include: autoresponders, shopping
carts, counters, mailing list managers, ad management, surveys, polls, discussion
boards, content management, calendars and click tracking.
There are 100s of free cgi scripts that can be found on the Net. Just do
a search on Google for "free cgi scripts" or visit the resources at the end
of this article.
In the next section, we will create an html email form to collect the name,
email address and comments of subscribers using a secure cgi formmail script.
The form results will automatically be sent to your email address.
Steps to installing your own cgi script
1. Check to ensure your web host supports CGI - your web host will have a
cgi-bin folder installed on the server. The cgi-bin is a special directory
in the server where all the files which require security are kept. This is
where you will upload your cgi script once it has been modified.
2. Download the cgi script - this is a secure cgi formmail script. Spammers
can't access and harvest your email address from this script.
http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.zip
3. Read the documentation that comes with the script - this will give you
a thorough understanding of what changes you'll need to make in order for
it work correctly with your web site and server. It will also provide you
with some examples.
Editing your script
4. Open and edit your cgi script using notepad (don't use an html editor
as this can create errors).
5. Remove the html tags from the script (at the top and bottom).
6. Change the path to perl to: #!/usr/bin/perl -wT (this is the first line
of the script to be edited).
7. The section of the cgi script shown below are the other minimum fields
to fill out in the script (replace the fields in the script you downloaded
with the changed fields in the script below).
# USER CONFIGURATION SECTION
# --------------------------
# Modify these to your own settings. You might have to
# contact your system administrator if you do not run
# your own web server. If the purpose of these
# parameters seems unclear, please see the README file.
#
BEGIN
{
$DEBUGGING = 1;
$emulate_matts_code= 0;
$secure = 1;
$allow_empty_ref = 1;
$max_recipients = 1;
$mailprog = '/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t';
$postmaster = 'youraddress@yourdomain.com';
@referers = qw(yourdomain.com);
@allow_mail_to = qw();
@recipients = ();
%recipient_alias = ('siteowner' =>
'youraddress@yourdomain.com',);
@valid_ENV = qw(REMOTE_HOST REMOTE_ADDR REMOTE_USER
HTTP_USER_AGENT);
$locale = '';
$charset = 'iso-8859-1';
$date_fmt = '%A, %B %d, %Y at %H:%M:%S';
$style = '';
$no_content = 0;
$double_spacing = 1;
$wrap_text = 0;
$wrap_style = 1;
$send_confirmation_mail = 0;
$confirmation_text = 'END_OF_CONFIRMATION';
From: youraddress@yourdomain.com
Subject: Subject of Your Contact Form
(short note here->> )Thank you for your interest. We will respond
shortly.
END_OF_CONFIRMATION
#
# USER CONFIGURATION END >>
# ----------------------------
# (no user serviceable parts beyond here)
------------------------------------------
$postmaster = Who's sending the email
@referrers = Domains that are allowed to host the script
%recipient_alias = Whom the script will send email to
In my form:
[form action="http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/formmail.pl" method="POST"]
[input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="siteowner"]
You can see how the siteowner variables match up in the .pl script and in
my form. This way nobody can tell what address the form is being emailed
to!
8. Rename your cgi script - name your script something else besides formmail
(ie contactus.pl), as this is the most common name people use. This will
prevent spammers from harvesting your email address.
9. Create your html form (contactus.htm)
Note: Replace [ ] with < > for your form to work.
[html]
[head]
[title]Contact Us[/title]
[/head]
[body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"]
[form method="post" action="http://www.yourdomain.com/
cgi-bin/contactus.pl"]
[input type=hidden name="recipient" value="siteowner"]
[input type=hidden name="subject" value="Subscribe Me Please"]
[input type=hidden name="required" value="fullname,email"]
[input type=hidden name="redirect"
value="http://www.yourdomainname.com/thankyou.htm"]
Full Name[br]
[input type=text name="fullname"]
[br]
Email Address[br]
[input type=text name="email"][br]
[br]
Comments[br] [textarea name="comments"][/textarea]
[br]
[br]
[input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"]
[/form]
[/body]
[/html]
10. Create a confirmation page (ie thankyou.htm) - this will automatically
thank people for filling in your form. It can be a simple html page with
the comments "Thank you for your interest. We will respond shortly."
Uploading the cgi script and html email form
Use your favorite FTP program for uploading to your server (I use SmartFTP.com
which you can download for free).
11. Set permissions to 755 - in SmartFTP right click on the script file you
wish to upload, click on Properties/CHMOD and set the permissions to 755.
12. Upload the cgi script - there are two modes of uploading, ASCII and Binary.
Upload the cgi script (contactus.pl) and any txt files in ASCII mode. Upload
the script to the cgi-bin folder. If you don't follow this you will not be
able to execute the script.
13. Upload the html form and any image files like .jpg or .gif in Binary
mode.
14. Test your cgi script by filling out the html email form and submitting
it. You should receive an immediate confirmation.
By adding interactivity to your web site using a cgi script, you can expand
the functions of your web site and create a more interesting experience for
your visitors. This will keep them coming back and help you stay ahead of
your competitors.
Resources
Formmail
script
Free CGI scripts
Scriptarchive.com
Hotscripts.com
cgi-resources.com
About the Author:
| Herman Drost
is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of
iSiteBuild.com Affordable
Web Hosting
Plans
from $30/year. Subscribe to his insightful “Marketing Tips” newsletter
for more original articles.
subscribe@isitebuild.com |
|
| Tip of
the Week |
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Although most Internet marketers
must learn some basic graphic design techniques, you don't have to spend
a fortune on fancy design software.
Paint Shop Pro is an excellent
graphics program and is the only program you'll need to design professional
looking graphics.
Today's tip is an excerpt from the highly acclaimed
Web Design Mastery series.
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| Syndication
Feeds |
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Marketing and Promotion |
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| Business
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| Dr. Kevin
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