Documentation
SALES LEAD GENERATOR:  V2.0


System Requirements

  • Perl 5
  • Sendmail

Preliminaries

  • Determine the path to PERL 5 on your web server host.  Note that some web hosting companies run both PERL 4 and PERL 5.  Make ABSOLUTELY sure you are not setting this up under PERL 4.  Ask your administrator if you are not sure.
  • Unpack the tar archive on your desktop using a program that unpacks UNIX TAR ARCHIVES. If you don't have such a program then download WINZIP FREE from SHAREWARE.COM
  • After you have unpacked the TAR archive you will have a collection of folders and files on your desktop.  Now you have to do some basic editing of each of these files (or at least some of them).  Use a text editor such as wordpad, notepad, BBEdit, simpletext, or teachtext to edit the files.  These are NOT WORD PROCESSOR DOCUMENTS they are just simple TEXT files so don't save them as word processor documents or save them with extentions such as .txt or they will NOT WORK.   Note that there may be a some files inside of folders which are "blank".   This is normal.

Preparing the CGI scripts

Define Path To PERL 5

The first step is to open up each and every file that has a .cgi extention and edit line number one of each script.  Each of the cgi scripts is written in perl 5. For your scripts to run they must know where perl 5 is installed on your web server. The path to perl 5 is defined to a cgi script in the first line of the file. In each of the cgi scripts the first line of code looks something like this:

#!/usr/bin/perl

If the path to perl 5 on your web server is different from /usr/bin/perl you must edit the first line of each cgi script to reflect the correct path. If the path to perl 5 is the same no changes are necessary. If you do not know the path to perl 5 ask the webmaster or system administrator at your server site.  

Configure the .cgi files

configure.cgi

This file pretty much runs the whole show.  If you screw this one up don't count on anything working properly.   In other words, make sure you take the time to do this step CORRECTLY.  Ask your administrator if you need to.  Below are the variables used in ALL of the other cgi scripts.  All of the other cgi programs USE configure.cgi to figure out where certain things are. 

  • $mailprogram ="/usr/sbin/sendmail";
  • $adminemail="reply\@yourdomain.com";
  • $passwordfile = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/saleslead/passwords.txt";
  • $datafile = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/saleslead/data.txt";
  • $optinlist = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/saleslead/optin.txt";
  • $optoutlist = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/saleslead/optout.txt";
  • $mailprogram is the path to sendmail on your server
  • $adminemail is the reply address of emails sent out
  • $passwordfile is the full path to the password file locking the download directory
  • $datafile is the full path to the comma delimited complete data file
  • $optinlist is the list of all the opt in subscribers
  • $optoutlist is the list of all the people that DO NOT WANT emailed

Installing Notes

  • Create a directory inside your webspace called "saleslead".  Inside of this directory upload your registration form, create another .htaccess password protected directory inside of "saleslead" called download and put your rewards here.  Make sure the .htaccess file points to passwords.txt for authentication
  • Create a directory inside your cgi-bin called "saleslead" and upload configure.cgi, data.txt, optin.txt, optout.txt, passwords.txt, and register.cgi
  • Chmod all the .cgi files to 755.  Chmod data.txt, optin.txt, optout.txt, and passwords.txt to 777 or 666.

Customizing the registration form

  • You can add as many or as few fields to your registration page as your want.  All data is collected and becomes required by the script.  The only 2 fields you MUST LEAVE ALONE are the EMAIL ADDRESS field and the OPTIN checkbox.
  • The people that would like to receive more emails from you are stored inside of optin.txt.  The people that DO NOT want emailed are stored in optout.txt (i.e. add to remove list).
  • If you are using this to run a survey you will want to use the data.txt file which has ALL the information from the registration form.   It is comma delimited.

Customizing the response email

If you want to customize the email that goes out after registering simply edit the text inside of register.cgi in the autorespond subroutine between these 2 lines

  • print MAIL <<ENDMAILMESSAGE;
  • ENDMAILMESSAGE

Customizing the response html page

If you want to customize the email that goes out after registering simply paste your html inside of register.cgi in the autorespond subroutine between these 2 lines

  • print <<ENDSTHANKYOU;
  • ENDSTHANKYOU