Hi, Liamsi -
Although I install cgi scripts on a regular basis, it is a bit
difficult to walk you through this. Google Answers prohibits our
posting personal information, so I would not be available to help you
through this.
Howeverk, once you download the program, there is a "read me" file
which will provide information on what you need to do to install the
script on your server.
This is from their Installation Guide
"To install Guestbook25 to your web server, read the following
directions:
1. First off, a couple rules about where the Guestbook25 files can go
on your web server. You should have five files to upload:
install.cgi, admin.cgi, view.cgi, sign.cgi, and template.html . If
your web server only allows you to run CGI/Perl files (with the .cgi
extension) in a predefined directory (often named cgi-bin), then
you're obviously going to have to put your scripts (.cgi extension
files) somewhere in there. But other than that, you have a bunch of
options. I recommend a setup similar to this one: upload install.cgi,
view.cgi, sign.cgi, and template.html in one directory, and upload
admin.cgi into a separate one and preferably a password-protected
directory. You also might want to create an additional directory for
the data files which install.cgi will generate. This directory can be
the same one as the install.cgi, sign.cgi, view.cgi, and maybe
admin.cgi (depending on where you choose to put it), the only
condition is that this directory must be have permissions of 777. If
you don't quite get the picture yet, don't sweat it, you will in a
couple of minutes.
2. Ok, you're ready to start. Again, make sure that you have the
following five files: template.html, admin.cgi, view.cgi, sign.cgi,
and install.cgi.
3. Open up all of the scripts (admin, sign, view, and install) with a
text editor, like Notepad, WordPad, or SimpleText. Edit the first
line, the path to perl, to fit the location of Perl on your server.
You will probably want to leave it as-is however, because
#!/usr/bin/perl is usually the path to perl on web servers. If your
web server is hosted on a Windows machine, then you probably don't
need the path to perl at all, but I suggest leaving it there, just in
case.
4. Edit the scripts again with a text editor, and find the line that
looks like my $data_directory = '/path/to/your/data/directory/'; it
should be at about the 30th line down. Change the
/path/to/your/data/directory/ to the correct path to your data
directory on your web server.
5. If you want to use your own template, configure your template.html.
Click here for more information about templates. If you don't want
to use your own template for Guestbook25, then when you're asked for
the "template path" in install.cgi, make sure to leave the field blank
and Guestbook25 will automatically run in Stand-Alone mode after
installation. Note, you can always change the mode later to template
mode through the Admin Center later if you choose to.
6. Set the permissions (CHMOD on *nix servers) of the directory in
which you want your data files to 777. If your server allows it, you
may want to store your data files in a non-web accessable directory,
for increased security. Note that unlike in past versions of
Guestbook25, the data files will be created by the script; you don't
need to upload them yourself.
7. Upload (in ASCII mode) the script files (the ones with .cgi
extensions).
8. Set the permissions (CHMOD on Unix servers) of the script files
(admin.cgi, sign.cgi, view.cgi, and install.cgi) to 775.
-Note, like I said before, permissions for files on Windows NT servers
are the same as their parent directory's permissions, meaning that you
need to set the directory that your script files are in to 755 or
0755.
9. Run the install.cgi script (with your browser,
http://www.yourpage.com/guestbook/install.cgi) and follow directions
from there.
10. Now that everything is installed, you will want to use the
admin.cgi file to customize your guestbook further.
Note: THE DEFAULT ADMIN CENTER PASSWORD IS admin
11. Finally, DELETE the install.cgi script from your server, for
security purposes. If everything is working fine, you shouldn't need
it again anyway."
If you are not familiar at all with working with cgi and permissions
(and it appears scarier than it really is), you can contact the writer
of the program on their contact form at
- http://www.guestbook25.com/contact/
and you might even ask them to install it for you.
If you have further questions for our Google Answers Researchers,
please feel free to open another question and do so.
Yours ever so,
Serenata |
