Documentation
AVS CHECK SOFTWARE:  V1.0


WARNING - THIS IS FARILY ADVANCED CGI CODE

Our support policy confines us to answering SPECIFIC questions about the installation.  We do not teach perl, systems configurations or unix as part of the membership.   If you require this level of support you will have to pay for installation.   Feel free to give it a shot - if you have the time and like to learn you are on the right page.  For more information regarding support policies read the FAQ.  If you prefer to have the system installed for you simply contact PSYBERCORE to have this arranged.

Preleminary Material for review

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.  

Configure the .cgi files

configure.cgi

This is the entire cgi.  There are several variables to edit, all of which should be pretty straightforward.  You will create a SINGLE configure.cgi file but you will upload 2 COPIES of it.  One into the /cgi-bin/avscheck directory and another into /cgi-bin/avscheck/admin

  • $loungeurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/avscheck/lounge/";
  • $cgiurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/avscheck";
  • $mysqldatabase = "mysql database name";
  • $mysqlusername = "mysql user name";
  • $mysqlpassword = "mysql password";
  • $mailprogram='/path/to/sendmail';
  • $adminemail = "you\@you.com";
  • $LOGIN="Authorize Net Username";
  • $PASSWORD="Authorize Net Password";
  • $WCOMMISSION = "5.00";  (commission paid to a webmaster refering a webmaster)

Account&commission structure notes  Inside of configure cgi you will find these little subroutines (see below).  The signup form used for new members (not webmasters) offers by default 3 options.  This option returns a value (1-3) which then uses configure.cgi to set the $AMOUNT (cost) of the membership, the $EXPIRE (number of days membership lasts) and the $COMMISSION (paid to the referring webmaster for the MEMBER).

  • if ($ACCOUNT eq "1"){
  • $AMOUNT = "1.00";
  • $EXPIRE = 365;
  • $COMMISSION = "1.00";
  • }

Prepare your cgi-bin directories and upload files

Create the following directories inside of your cgi-bin and upload files as indicated below.  Note that the configure.cgi file is used TWICE - its the EXACT same file just upload 2 copies as shown below.  Note that the cgi-bin/avscheck/admin/ directory should be password protected and access should be blocked for any network other than yours.

  • /cgi-bin/avscheck/
    • apply.cgi
    • configure.cgi
    • confirm.cgi
    • deletesite.cgi
    • forgot.cgi
    • idsearch.cgi
    • mlogin.cgi
    • modify.cgi
    • modifysite.cgi
    • newsite.cgi
    • premodify.cgi
    • reviewsites.cgi
    • search.cgi
    • webmasters.cgi
    • webmasterstats.cgi
    • wforgot.cgi
    • wlogin.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/avscheck/admin
  • admin.cgi
  • chargeback.cgi
  • configure.cgi
  • delete.cgi
  • expire.cgi
  • modify.cgi
  • screensites.cgi
  • search.cgi

The rest of the files

Now create 2 more directories inside of yourdomain.com/avscheck/ and upload files as follows

File Access Permissions

File access permissions must be set correctly for this program to run.  You must set the access permissions for each of these files.  Set all the .cgi files to 755.   Set all the rest to 777.

Misc Notes

Setup crontab to expire account   Setup a daily crontab file to execute /cgi-bin/avscheck/admin/expire.cgi so member accounts will be refreshed daily

MYSQL notes   You have to have the avs.sql database already loaded up before any of this cgi is going to work

Approving accounts    You have to manually approve every webmaster that signs up.  This is the way all the big companies do it.  Thats what the screening button is for on the admin panel.

Commission structures  There are two commission types (the kind paid out to a webmaster if they refer a newsite) and the kind a webmaster makes when they refer a PAYING customer to your site.  You want to pay the latter alot.  The webmaster referal you can give them something I guess but I would put the primary emphasis on the commissions for recruiting paying memberships

Authorize.net informatioin

For more information interfacing to authorize.net See the authorize.net documentation for any confusion regarding the structure/syntax of the form fields and their required values.