Documentation
BANNER GATE:  V2.0


System Requirements

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.  

Create database and upload the .sql file

Upload the .sql file into your mysql database (review mysql tutorial) if you do not know how, or better yet - bug your isp and get them to do it.

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.  You will use TWO COPIES of configure.cgi to run this system.  They are the EXACT SAME FILE - just TWO COPIES (/cgi-bin/banner/configure.cgi and /cgi-bin/banner/admin/configure.cgi)

  • $admin = "you\@yourdomain.com";
  • $mailprogram = "/path/to/sendmail";
  • $mysqldatabasename = "name of your mysql database";
  • $mysqlusername="your mysql password";
  • $mysqlpassword="your mysql username";
  • $destination = "http://www.yourdomain.com/";  clickthrough url
  • $imagefile = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/bannergate/images/banner.gif";  full path to your banner
  • $threshold = 1500;  number of unique clicks required for free account
  • $cgidir = "/cgi-bin/bannergate";  URI of bannergate cgi files
  • $deadaccounttolerance = 10;  not used in this version (ignore)
  • $emails = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/bannergate/admin/emails";  path to email files
  • $adduser = "http://www.yourdomain.com/location/of/your/adminpanel/to/add/users/manually/";   URL of your password site admin panel if you have one.

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Upload all of the cgi files (.cgi) into a directory you create called "bannergate" inside cgi-bin/bannergate/
  • Make a directory inside of your /cgi-bin/bannergate folder called admin and the files inside of the cgibin/admin directory after you unpack the tarball and upload the rest of the cgi files into here.
  • Make a directory inside of your normal webspace (http://www.yourdomain.com/bannergate) called bannergate and upload index.html (the login page) here.
  • Make another directory inside of http://www.yourdomain.com/bannergate/admin/ (called admin.. duh) and upload the admin index.html page. 
  • Make another directory inside your webspace http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/bannergate/images/ to store your banner
  • Password protect both the /cgi-bin/bannergate/admin/ and http://www.yourdomain.com/bannergate/admin/ directories with .htaccess.  Read the tutorial section if you don't already know how to do this.

Chmod the files

  • Chmod all the .cgi files to 755. 

Upload Your Banner(s)

  • You have to upload the banner files by ftp (as BINARY DATA) to the images directory when you are going to create an account. 

Operating your Banner Program

There really isn't much to it.  Install the system.  Promote your program.  Note that accounts are NOT automatically generated when one of your affiliates qualifies for a free account.  Rather, an email is generated and sent to the user which he/she can then redeem by sending back to you.   This is just one additional security feature implemented.

The linkcode for the banner is automatically generated for your users during the signup process BTW