Documentation
HTML ROTATOR:  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/htmlrotator/configure.cgi and /cgi-bin/htmlrotator/admin/configure.cgi)

  • $mysqldatabasename = "name of mysql database";
  • $mysqlusername="your mysql username";
  • $mysqlpassword="your mysql password";
  • $htmlroot = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/htmlrotator/html";

For the frickin 1 millionth time A URI (i.e. that is NOT a URL) is NOT a PATH.  If you don't understand... hey... I made a tutorial to read!  Imagine that!

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Make directory inside HTML space called htmlrotator (upload index.shtml)
  • Make directory inside htmlrotator called webmasters and another called admin (upload corresponding index pages for admin panel and webmaster login panel)
  • Inside cgi-bin make directory called htmlrotator and upload all the .cgi files.  Chmod them all to 755
  • Inside cgi-bin/htmlrotator make directory called html and chmod to 666 or 777
  • Inside cgi-bin/htmlrotator make directory called admin upload all the ADMIN .cgi files.  Chmod them all to 755.  Password protect this directory.  Read the tutorial section if you don't already know how to do this.
  • You can delete all the files inside the /cgi-bin/htmlrotator/html directory - they are just examples.

Chmod the files

  • Chmod all the .cgi files to 755.  Chmod the /cgi-bin/htmlrotator/html dir to 666 or 777

Upload Your Ad(s)

How to get the ads to show up!

The important part!  This uses SSI (server sides includes) to get the html to pop up.  If you are using multiple categories you will make an EXACT copy of rotate.cgi and change ONE LINE (see below).   This value "marketing" must EXACTLY match the value of the category form field inside the admin panel.

$query = "marketing";

To call the ad simply cut and paste the following command inside your webpage wherever you please.

<!--#EXEC CGI="/cgi-bin/htmlrotator/marketing.cgi"-->

To clarify let me review what we have done.   For each category you simply clone rotate.cgi and rename it to "categoryname.cgi".  In this example I used marketing.  Inside rotate.cgi there is one single line of code to change

$query = "marketing";

$query must be set to match the value of the category form field you set inside the admin panel.  So if you have 40 categories you will make 40 clones of rotate.cgi.  One copy for each category.  Each clone will have $query value changed.  All .cgi files chmodded to 755 as usual.  To call the rotator for any category simply use the SSI command pointing to that rotator.

<!--#EXEC CGI="/cgi-bin/htmlrotator/marketing.cgi"-->

If you do NOT want multiple categories then you simply use ONE category - call it something like "general".  Follow the same procedure.