Documentation
DBAY AUCTION SOFTWARE
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
- Perl 5
- Mysql
Database Software
- Msql-Mysql Module
- DBI
Module
- SSLEAY/Open
SSL required for using port 443
- Sendmail
- Crontab Recommended to use bulk email feature
- Supports Authorize.net Version 3.0 or Syntax
Verification
- Unix, Linux or NT Operating System
- Secure Webspace with CGI Capability
Recommended
- Online merchant
account required for real time validation
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.
- If you need to review or learn the basics of
CGI and Perl visit the tutorial
- 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
$localurl =
"http://www.yourdomain.com/";
$datadirectory =
"/path/to/cgi-bin/dbay/data";
$cgiurl =
"http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/dbay";
$mysqldatabase = "name of mysql
database";Name of your mysql
database. If you are using a seperate mysql server Set
$mysqldatabase to databasenameServername
$mysqlusername = "mysql
username";
$mysqlpassword = "mysql
password";
$mailprogram='/path/to/sendmail';
$adminemail =
"you\@yourdomain.com";
$nopic=
"http://www.yourdomain.com/dbay/pix/nopic";
$icon
="http://www.yourdomain.com/dbay/pix/icon.gif";
$registrationurl =
"http://www.yourdomain.com/dbay/index.html";
$increment = 2;
(this is the bid increment that is forced by the system) next bid must be $2 higher
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.
- /cgi-bin/dbay/
- bid.cgi
- comment.cgi
- configure.cgi
- feedback.cgi
- forgot.cgi
- getcloseditem.cgi
- getitem.cgi
- modify.cgi
- premodify.cgi
- register.cgi
- search.cgi
- searchcategory.cgi
- sell.cgi
- /cgi-bin/dbay/admin
- admin.cgi
- close.cgi
- configure.cgi
- deleteitem.cgi
- modify.cgi
The rest of the files
Now create 2 more directories 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
Charging your clients for selling
items This system is setup to charge your users to sell items only at
the time they PLACE the item up for bid. Future modifications will also do
additional processing on closed items but this version does NOT. By default this is
setup to only check the syntax of the credit card. The authorize.net routines are in
place if you change $validation to realtime they will be called. You may require a
programmer to complete this interface however depending on your system configuration.
Closing Auctions
A crontab file must be setup to automatically close items. Setup an hourly crontab
to execute close.cgi. Make sure you change all required libraries by their full
paths.
End of Auction
At the end of the auction the item will no longer be available by searching the database.
Email notices are sent to the winner and the seller so they can contact each other
and complete the sale. A closeditem url is created if either requires it.
Feedback Users
may leave positive/neutral/negative feedback about any other user. If you click on
the username you will be able to see that users feedback profile.
More on running the system
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.
To add or modify categories all you need to
do is change the dropdown menus on the search form, the sell form and header.html.
If you are going to let people browse by category with the text links you need to make
analogous changes there.