Documentation
SIMPLE SAFELIST


System Requirements

  • Perl 5
  • Sendmail
  • Paypal Account

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.
  • 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 runs the entire cgi script.   Variables are pretty obvious to edit.

  • $LISTNAME = "Name of your Safelist";
  • $BASEURL = "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/safelist";
  • $DATADIR = "/full/path/to/cgi-bin/safelist/data";
  • $SENDMAIL = "/usr/sbin/sendmail";
  • $YOUREMAIL = "you\@yourdomain.com";
  • $COLOR = "White";
  • $FROMNAME = "Safelist";
  • $FROMEMAIL = "your\@yourdomain.com";
  • $YOURNAME = "Webmaster of Safelist";
  • $MONEY = "Monthly Membership Fee: \$4.00 Dollars U.S.";
  • $ADMIN_PASSWORD = "youradminpassword";

Edit paypal.txt

Put this URL in the redirect part of the PayPal Code in the paypal.txt file: properly.   http://www.youdomain.com/cgi-bin/yourlistdirectory/safelist.cgi?Action=Join

Make Login/Join Pages

Make a page for your users to signup and login.   index.html file is a basic signup button form.  Your members login via http://www.youdomain.com/cgi-bin/yourlistdirectory/safelist.cgi?Action=login.   Admin login URL is http://your-address.com/cgi-bin/yourlistdirectory/safelist.cgi?Action=Admin

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Create directory /cgi-bin/safelist and upload all files inside the cgibin folder you have extracted.  Chmod all .cgi files to 755 and everything else to 777 or 666
  • Chmod the profiles directory to 777
  • Create directory or page with signup button and webmaster login as noted above.