Documentation
SUPERCLIX PROFESSIONAL:  V4.1


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 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.

  • $mysqldatabase = "mysql database name";  If you are using a seperate mysql server Set $mysqldatabase to databasenameServername
  • $mysqlusername = "mysql username";
  • $mysqlpassword = "mysql password";
  • $localurl = "yourdomain.com";
  • $mailprogram='/path/to/sendmail';
  • $adminemail = "you\@yourdomain.com";
  • $cgidirectory = "/path/to/cgi-bin/superclix";
  • $cgiurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/superclix";
  • $webmasterurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/superclix/webmasters";
  • $clickthroughurl = "http://www.yourdomain.com/";
  • $agentcode = "superclix";
  • $primarycommission = 25; #cash reward in CENTS to FIRST LEVEL
  • $secondarycommission = 5; #cash reward in CENTS to SECOND LEVEL (set to zero if you dont want to use this)
  • $minpayout = 0; #minimum threshold before checks are sent and statistics are seen

Upload Your Edited CGI and Database Files

  • Upload all of the cgi files (.cgi) into a directory you create called "superclix" inside your cgi-bin
  • Make a directory inside of your /cgi-bin/superclix folder called data and upload the schedule.db file into this directory.

Upload The Edited HTML Files

  • Make a directory inside of your webspace called superclix and 2 directories inside of this called webmasters and admin
  • Modify the form action tags of the signup page (superclix/index.html) admin (superclix/admin/index.html) page and the webmasters (superclix/webmasters/index.html) page and upload these into their respective directories.

Upload Your Banner(s)

  • Call your banner banner.gif and upload this into the http://www.yourdomain.com/webmasters/ directory
  • You will need to modify banner.cgi if you plan to use more than one banner image

Upload Your Banner image

  • Upload your banner into the webmaster directory. 

WHEN YOU ARE FINISHED...

http://www.yourdomain.com/superclix/index.html

    SIGNUP PAGE FOR NEW AFFILIATES

http://www.yourdomain.com/superclix/webmasters/index.html

Where users will login to get bannercode, check stats, modify info

http://www.yourdomain.com/superclix/admin/index.html

Password protected admin area

ALL CGI will be http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/superclix/

File Access Permissions

File access permissions must be set correctly for this program to run. The table below lists the permissions of each file which are to be set by the unix command ( chmod ) used to set the correct access permissions. You must set the access permissions for each of these files.

  • SET PERMISSIONS TO 755
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/add.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/banners.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/bydate.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/byuser.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/configure.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/deleteuser.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/enter.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/export.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/getinfo.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/getpaid.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/getpayout.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/login.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/modify.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/newday.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/overview.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/premodify.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/start.cgi
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/stats.cgi
  • SET PERMISSIONS TO 777
  • /cgi-bin/superclix/data/schedule.db

Crontab newday.cgi

The newday.cgi file must be set to execute every day at midnight.  If you dont do this, your stats will become corrupted. 

Operating your Affiliates Program

ADMINISTRATION

The administrative interface is basically a navigational and editing interface.  If you take a little time to push buttons you will see how it works.  You can zoom into the statistics from any point starting at the yearly overview and zooming into the individual users statistics.   From the payout menu you can revoke sales or delete affiliates.

EXPORTING PAY TABLES

The payout menu allows you to export the current pay period sales data into a flat file ASCII delimited database which will appear in your web browser.  Save this file as TEXT and you can import it into your favorite database program.

CHANGING PAYOUT SCHEDULES

The file inside of /cgi-bin/data/schedules.db is a table of the pay periods broken up into one pay period per line.  The default pay schedule consists of 24 periods (24 lines).  There are no restrictions to how you can restructure this table.  Make sure you do NOT have any extra blank lines in this file however or it will totally throw off your statistics.

SETTING UP THE CLICKTHROUGH GATEWAY

Superclix uses what is called a "GATEWAY" for paying out affiliates.  The idea is that the affiliate only gets PAID for the click after reaching a secondary or deeper page of your website.  For example, if I send you a click and the visitor exits - i dont get paid.  If they explore the site and they reach the order page or whatever - this triggers the payout script (getpaid.cgi) by server sides includes and THEN I get paid.   This is a great way to increase the effectiveness of paying people per click and it discourages cheaters.  Detailed instructions are below:

  • Use enter.cgi for your affiliate link code. This is generated in the member login area (get bannercode) automatically http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/superclix/enter.cgi?$username
  • Inside of the gateway page (say the order page or whatever) place getpaid.cgi inside an image tag or execute with server sides includes.
  • When getpaid.cgi is executed 2 things happen. The cookie is trashed so the affiliate cannot get paid again from that same web surfer and the stats for that affiliate are incremented by one unique click.