Documentation
AFFILIATE AD ROTATOR:  V1.0


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 Zip File for this program and save it to your desktop.
  • Unpack the tar archive on your desktop using a program that unpacks Zip Files. If you don't have such a program then download WINZIP FREE from SHAREWARE.COM
  • After you have unpacked the Zip 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/adv/configure.cgi and /cgi-bin/adv/admin/configure.cgi)

  • mysqldatabasename = "your mysql database name";
  • $mysqlusername="your mysql username";
  • $mysqlpassword="your mysql password";
  • $targetclickthrough="http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/adv/clickthrough.cgi";
  • $cgidir = "/cgi-bin/adv";

Pretty self explanatory I hope.   $cgidir btw is NOT the FULL PATH to the /cgi-bin/adv directory NO - its JUST the RELATIVE URL - you will not need to change this probably.

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Upload all of the cgi files (.cgi) into a directory you create called "adv" inside your cgi-bin
  • Upload adv.cgi, clickthrough.cgi, configure.cgi, and userstats.cgi into /cgi-bin/adv/
  • Make a directory inside of your /cgi-bin/adv folder called admin and the files inside of the cgibin/admin directory after you unpack the tarball and upload add.cgi, configure.cgi, delete.cgi, getinfo.cgi, modify.cgi, reset.cgi, stats.cgi, and view.cgi into here.
  • Make a directory inside of your normal webspace (http://www.yourdomain.com/adv) called adv and inside of here create a directory called "admin" and another called "webmasters".  If you want affiliates to be able to check stats they can login through the http://www.yourdomain.com/adv/webmasters/index.html page.  Otherwise you wont use that page at all.
  • Make another directory inside of http://www.yourdomain.com/adv/admin/ (called admin.. duh) and upload the admin index.html page.  This is the page you will use to add affiliates, check stats, and do what you need to.
  • Password protect both the /cgi-bin/adv/admin/ and http://www.yourdomain.com/adv/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. 

About adding banners

  • When you add a new affilaite account you have to specify the URL (i.e. begins with http) of the banner image.  If you are serving your own banners then you have to FTP the banners somewhere obviously.

Operating your Banner Program

There really isn't much to it.  Install the system.  Enter all the info for your affiliate programs into the rotator.  Take a look at the file (bannercode.html) to see the javascript code you will need to insert in any and all pages you want to display ads.  You can place the bannercode on any page even on another server.

The bannercode is below...

<script language=JavaScript1.2 src=http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/adv/adv.cgi></script>