Re: New to CGI

One of my clients had me create a simple script for this purpose.  He called
it "Share This Site".

It's a simple form that the visitor completes.  The visitor is sent an
acknowledgement message, the person to "share" with gets a "canned" message,
and the owner of the site gets a quick message containing the Names and
e-mail addresses of both parties.  This script also doubles as a mailing
list entry form.  This client isn't using a list server, rather collecting
e-mail addresses from interested parties.

If this is what you are looking for, let me know and I'll send you a copy of
the script and the form.

Some ISP's allow CGI from any directory, others are more restrictive

In order to use CGI (assuming your ISP is Unix or Linux), you will probably
need to have "shell" access, or be able to "telnet" to the server.

Other things you will need to know is the path and version of "perl", the
path of their "mail" and  "date" programs.

Once you log in via telnet,  type in the following and make note of the
paths supplied.  You will need these paths in order to run your script.
Here's the commands to find this information.

which perl
which mail
which date

You will also need to know the actual path to your web directory.  This
varies widely in the ISP community.

Using telnet, log in to your web directory and the following command.

pwd

This command will return the full path to the "current directory".

Of course, if your ISP is running a Windows NT server, none of this
information will help.  :(

Further reading on perl is a must if you want to create your own scripts,
and comes in handy for using pre-written scripts.  One of my favorite sites
for getting information on-line is http://www.mcp.com for Macmillan
Publishers.  This site requires registration (free) and has quite a few web
programming books that can be read on-line.

paul


-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Bushman <bushman(at)goodnet.com>
To: hwg-basics(at)hwg.org <hwg-basics(at)hwg.org>
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 1999 12:09 AM
Subject: New to CGI


>I have a client that want's visitors to send the URL of his
>site to their friends. In other words, a text field where
>visitors enter the email address of a friend, they click a
>"send" or "submit" button, and an email message is sent to
>the friend containing the URL of the site.
>
>Can this be done? I've never done anything with CGI. It
>seems like I should be able to find some script, upload it
>to a cgi-bin (where this "bin" is, I don't have a clue),
>then create a form with the text field and the submit
>button. Can someone please give me detailed steps? Keep in
>mind, I'm a first-timer.
>
>My client will eventually have his site hosted with
>Interland. Would they have some CGI's to use for this?
>--
>Rob Bushman
>Educator/Web Developer
>mailto:bushman(at)goodnet.com
>
>"No other success can compensate for failure in the home"
>                     -David O. McKay
>

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