Documentation
REVSHARE TOOLKIT:  V7.1


NOTE:  It is not recommended that you attempt this installation if you have no comprehension of cgi.  We can install it for you for a minimal fee.

System Requirements

  • Customizable to work with all operating systems
  • Customizable to work with all web servers
  • Server Sides Includes Required
  • Compatible with all billing companies and billing methods
  • If you are using NT you must have DAF installed
  • Perl 5
  • Sendmail or Qmail

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.  

Previous installations required

This script interfaces with IBILL PROCESSOR so you have to install IBILL PROCESSOR to handle the transactions.  This system handles the affiliates commissions.  Once you have IBILL PROCESSOR installed simply install the REVSHARE TOOLKIT and upload the accountcreate.cgi replacement file included in this tar file over the one distributed with the IBILL PROCESSOR.

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 for help 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.

$MasterAccountID = "axxxx";

Your IBILL master account number (a8493 or whatever)

$MasterAccountNumber = "axxxx";

Again... Your IBILL master account number (a8493 or whatever)

$agentcode = "pickaname";

Use a UNIQUE name for your site (for example - "myaffiliate", or "salesagent") DO NOT USE SPACES

$mailprogram='/path/to/sendmail';

Full path to SENDMAIL on your webserver

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

Your email address (YOU HAVE TO USE THE BACKSLASH HERE!)

$webmasterurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/path/to/agents/webmasters";

Full URL to the webmasters  directory containing the login form

$clickthroughurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/";

This is the FULL URL where people will be sent after clicking on your banner.

$ErrorURL="http://www.yourdomain.com/agents/error.html";

This is the FULL URL to the error.html page (used by the cgi - not by you)

$SuccessURL="http://www.yourdomain.com/agents/thankyou.html";

This is the FULL URL to the thankyou.html page (used by the cgi - not by you)

$cgiurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/agents";

Full URL to the agents directory containing the .cgi files

$cgidirectory = "/path/to/cgi-bin/agents";

This is the FULL PATH to the agents directory containing the .cgi files

$datadirectory = "/path/to/agents/data";

This is the FULL PATH to the agents data directory. By default is /path/to/cgi-bin/agents/data

$logsdirectory = "/path/to/agents/logs";

This is the FULL PATH to the agents logs directory.  By default is /path/to/cgi-bin/agents/logs

$clicksdirectory = "/path/to/agents/clicks";

This is the FULL PATH to the agents clicks directory. By default is /path/to/cgi-bin/agents/clicks

$localurl = "yourdomain.com";

Your domain name

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Upload all of the cgi files (.cgi) into a directory you create called "agents" inside your cgi-bin (http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/agents)
  • Make three new directories inside of your /cgi-bin/agents folder data, clicks, and logs
    • http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/agents/data/
    • http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/agents/clicks/
    • http://yourdomain/cgi-bin/agents/logs/

    Note that the logs and the clicks directories are empty folders, but there are 4 files inside the data folder (schedule.db, paid, passwords, and memberdatabase) all of these 4 files except schedule.db are just blank text files.   schedule.db is a database for organizing your pay periods. If you see files called blank.ignore then ignore them.

Upload The Edited HTML Files

  • Make a directory inside of your webspace called agents (http://yourdomain/agents/) and 2 directories inside of this called webmasters and admin (http://yourdomain/agents/webmasters, http://yourdomain/agents/admin)
  • Modify the form action tags of the admin (index.html) page and the webmasters (index.html) page and upload these into their respective directories.
  • If you are not allowing textlinks then you will want to customize the banners.cgi html output so it doesnt give instructions for text links.  Simply edit the html in between the ENDHEADER markers inside of banners.cgi

Password Protect the admin Directory

If you need to review or learn the basics of CGI and Perl check out the superscripts tutorial archives.

Upload Your Banner image(s)

  • Upload your banner(s) into the http://yourdomain/agents/webmaster directory. 

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED...

http://www.yourdomain.com/agents/index.html

    SIGNUP PAGE FOR NEW AFFILIATES

http://www.yourdomain.com/agents/webmasters/index.html

Where users will login to get bannercode, check stats, modify info

http://www.yourdomain.com/agents/admin/index.html

Password protected admin area

ALL CGI will be http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/agents/

File Access 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.  As usual you will set all .cgi files to 755 (rwx-r-x-r-x)and all other files and directories to 666 (rw-rw-rw).

 CHMOD 755

 CHMOD 777

  • add.cgi
  • login.cgi
  • banners.cgi
  • bydate.cgi
  • byuser.cgi
  • agents.cgi
  • stats.cgi
  • revoke.cgi
  • overview.cgi
  • configure.cgi
  • delete.user.cgi
  • editstats.cgi
  • getinfo.cgi
  • revshare.cgi
  • payout.cgi
  • logs directory
  • data directory and everything inside (schedule.db, paid, passwords, memberdatabase)
  • clicks directory



Edit payout.cgi

This is simple - just edit the path to the configure.cgi file used by the Revshare Toolkit.

require "/path/to/cgi-bin/agents/configure.cgi";

Edit accountcreate.cgi

You simply edit the path to the /cgi-bin/agents/payout.cgi file in the require statement and replace your old accountcreate.cgi file with the one distributed with the revshare toolkit

require "/path/to/cgi-bin/agents/payout.cgi";

Edit your IBILL JOIN PAGE

To finish the installation you have to add a server sides includes tag into the form buttons on your IBILL JOIN PAGE.  You may have to rename your page to .shtml instead of .html on some machines - ASK your system administrator the requirements on your server to execute SSI.  The tag should look like this and is inserted inside the html for each join button:

  • <!-- COPY CODE BETWEEN THESE COMMENT LINES FOR EACH CREDIT CARD SUB ACCOUNT -->
  • <form method="POST" action="https://secure.logicom.com/cgi-win/ccard/ccard.exe">
  • <INPUT type="hidden" name="hellopage" value="ibillblack">
  • <input type="hidden" name="reqtype" value="secure">
  • <input type="hidden" name="ref1" value="/path/to/pincodefile">
  • <input type="hidden" name="ref2" value="3">
  • <!--#EXEC CGI="/cgi-bin/agents/revshare.cgi" -->
  • <input type="hidden" name="account" value="pincodefile">
  • <input type="submit" value="$2.95 for 3 days by credit card"></form>
  • <!-- COPY CODE BETWEEN THESE COMMENT LINES FOR EACH CREDIT CARD SUB ACCOUNT -->

Replace web good pages

You have to replace the webgood page(s) with the special versions included with the Revshare Toolkit distribution.  Just edit the form action tag.

Set default commissions in REVSHARE

Before the system will accept any signups you have to setup "DEFAULT REVSHARE SPLITS" inside of the IBILL admin section by logging into your account @ IBILL

Cookies, IP's and Ports

If you haven't guessed by now, Agents of Fortune uses COOKIES to keep track of commissions.  When an surfer clicks on one of your affiliates banners a cookie is set inside their browser and remains there until something like the year 2003.  Anytime that visitor returns to your site and buys something payout.cgi sucks the cookie out of the browser and writes to a database the commission information.  Likewise if this surfer also signed up for your affiliate system the cookie would write to a database and Agents would know that this new affiliate was referred to you by someone else.  The secondary commission information is all tracked in the member databases. 

The thing about cookies (and its a good thing) is that you can only retrieve cookies that you sent.  This means it is totally IMPOSSIBLE for you to read all the cookies in my browser that have been set by 100's of other websites tracking my behaviour.  Cookies can only be read from the exact same IP address and PORT that they were set by.

Notes for NT users

You must turn encryption ON for this installation to work on NT.  Also you must be using sendmail or a compatible email program or modify add.cgi to work with your system. 

Operating your Affiliates Program

ADMINISTRATION

The administrative interface is basically a navigational and editing interface.  If you take a little time to push buttons you will see how it works.  You can zoom into the statistics from any point starting at the yearly overview and zooming into the individual users statistics.   From the payout menu you can revoke sales or delete affiliates.