Documentation
FREE 4 ALL LINK NETWORK:  V3.0


System Requirements

  • Unix, Lynyx or NT Operating System
  • Perl 5 with sockets library installed
  • Sendmail
  • Ability to run cgi scripts and write to files OUTSIDE of your cgi-bin

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.
  • Download the tarfile for this program and save it to your desktop.
  • 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 for mastergate in ALL of the other cgi scripts.  All of the other cgi programs USE configure.cgi to figure out where certain things are.

$SENDMAIL= "/path/to/sendmail";

This is the path to sendmail on your webserver

$admin = "you\@yourdomain.com";

your email address - MUST KEEP BACKSLASH"

Confused?  My email address is webmaster@superscripts.com.  So here I would use webmaster\@superscripts.com.  Don't worry about trying to understand - its a perl5 thing.  You have to use the backslash.

$site = "http://www.yourdomain.com/path/to/html/ffan/index.html";

Full URL to the link page of your FFAN installation. 

$linkpage = "/path/to/index.html";

Full PATH to the link page.

$cgibinurl = "/path/to/submissions.txt";

Full URL to the ffan directory inside your cgi-bin that contains all of the CGI and .txt files.

$cgibinpath = "/path/to/message.txt";

Full PATH to the ffan directory inside your cgi-bin that contains all of the CGI and .txt files.

$localurl = "yourdomain.com";

YOUR SIMPLIFIED DOMAIN NAME.  For example I would put superscripts.com NOT www.suprscripts.com or /

Edit message.txt

This is the email message that is sent to anyone linking to your FFAN site.  Simply cut and paste your customized email message into this file.

Edit the formaction tag of index.html and your admin page

This must point to the corresponding .cgi files on your webserver

RECOMPILE A NEW FFAN.ZIP FILE

This is the file you will allow visitors to download from your FFAN site.  You have to edit ONE variable inside this script so you will be notified when a new FFAN site joins under you

Edit ffan.cgi

Open up the file called ffan.cgi

  • Find the subroutine called sub pyramid (do a search with your text editor - its towards the latter 2/3 of the ffan.cgi file)

sub pyramid {

$root = "webmaster\@superscripts.com";

}

  • Edit $root = "you\@yourdomain.com"; to your email address making sure to LEAVE THAT BACKSLASH IN BEFORE THE  @ symbol!
  • You DONT want people that download the ffan.cgi and configure.cgi from your site to join your FFAN to edit this variable.  If they do then they will not be part of your FFAN - they will have started their own.  So dont tell them about it.  The reason I clumped all the code together without comment lines was to make it very difficult for people to figure this out on their own.

Upload your Edited TEXT files to your server

  • Put all the .txt and .cgi files inside of http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/ffan
  • Create a directory http://www.yourdomain.com/ffan/ and put the index page there
  • Create a directory http://www.yourdomain.com/ffan/admin/ and put the ADMIN index page there.  You should protect this directory.

Set Your Script Permissions

File access permissions must be set correctly for this program to run. The table below lists the permissions of each file which are to be set by the unix command (chmod) used to set the correct access permissions. You must set the access permissions for each of these files.  If you are using WS_FTP then right click on the files located on your webserver.  Then you will see a hidden menu pop up.  Click on CHMOD(UNIX).  Then a box pops up with 9 checkboxes. 

 CHMOD 755

 CHMOD 777

add.cgi

autoadd.cgi

clean.cgi

configure.cgi

delete.cgi

ffan.cgi

readd.cgi

retry.cgi

review.cgi

submit.cgi

badlinks.txt

deadsites.txt

links.txt

message.txt

newsites.txt

submissions.txt

index.html

Notes

  • Always CLEAN your submission lists PRIOR to submitting urls through the FFAN.  This checks your submission list for bad links.   If the CLEANING FINISHES you will see a message that says

LIST CHECK FINISHED

If you DO NOT see this message then the LAST LINK it checked should be DELETED because the domain name is NO LONGER online or there is a majorly slow connection to this site.

  • Make a copy of ffan.cgi and configure.cgi and provide a copy so your visitors can download it and install it on their site - thus joining the FFAN under you.  You can copy the instructions from here provided you provide a link to superscripts.com.  You may NOT alter or delete the header copyright information from the cgi scripts.
  • If you want to email everyone on the FFAN import the file submissions.txt into your mailing list software.
  • If you have problems running the CGI SCRIPTS because you keep seeing a message PERMISSION DENIED you need to COMMENT OUT a line in EACH CGI script called

&refergate.cgi;

change this line to this with a text editor like wordpad

#&refergate.cgi

This will turn off the URL checking but opens up a possible security hole.  You can resecure the cgi by placing ALL of the .cgi and .txt files EXCEPT for ffan.cgi and autoadd.cgi into a PASSWORD protected DIRECTORY.