Preinstalled Scripts and Frequently Asked Questions    

Preinstalled Scripts

Auction     Banner Wheel Industrial     Boutique   Click and Go    Counter  
Directory Scan    DP Market        DP Tellafriend    Guardian    2B Guestbook    Guestbook
Miva Merchant     Miva Order    Monsterbook    Newspro   NueQuiz   Random Image Generator
Random Link Generator    Random Text    Search 
    Shopmonster
    That's an Order   
Web Based Control Panel (Monstercontrols) 
  Web-based Mail     WWWBoard              

Note:   In all example URLs change hostingsupport.com to your domain name.

Miva Merchant is a browser based storefront and catalog development and management system. Using nothing more than a web browser, developers can implement dynamic data driven storefronts with integrated shopping basket, catalog, hierarchal categories, boolean product search, and order processing. Miva Merchants architecture lets developers prepare and market specialized look and feel, payment processing, and shipping modules.
Documentation for configuration and usage can be found at http://hostingsupport.com/manual/addons.html#Merchant2 and http://miva.com



Miva Order (see demo at http://miva.com/products/demo/Order/order.mv)
Miva Order is a customizable browser-based order form and order processing system. It can be personalized with specific color, graphics, product descriptions and other layout options. Businesses simply incorporate a link from the web page where their products are sold, permitting customers to seamlessly access the order form and make purchases.
Users are able to create and manage custom product order forms with provisions that simplify the process of calculating sales tax, shipping costs and currency formatting.
Documentation for configuration and usage can be found at
http://hostingsupport.com/manual/addons.html#Order and http://miva.com

Back to Top


That's an Order LE:   http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/thatsanorder_LE.setup
A 25 item shopping cart which can be easily created via a web page  with Secure Server order abilities.

That's An Order LE creates a unique order number for each order made, creates an email database which can be used for sales and mailings, and creates a master backup file which will store all order information, except for credit card numbers, for security reasons.
That's An Order will collect First name, Last name, Address, Day phone, Credit Card number, and cardholder's name for each customer. 
The order form checks the validity of the credit card number and the expiration date.
The final total including tax and shipping is displayed to the customer before the order is finalized.
When the customer completes their order a message thanking them for shopping at your store and informing them that they will receive an order confirmation via email is displayed. Provide your customer the option of secure (SSL) or regular checkout. 
Add up to 25 products.

Back to Top

Shopmonster   http://hostingsupport.com/shop2/cart.htm
Allows visitors to your on-line shopping site to collect items in a virtual shopping cart over multiple product web pages without losing the items ordered.   The cart keeps track of what the shopper has ordered with a SID (Shopper I.D). There are no cookies used, so the software will work through a firewall and with older browsers.
Shoppers may view the contents of their shopping cart at any time and may add or delete items as needed. The program automatically calculates the subtotal, sales tax, shipping charges, and grand total. When a visitor decides to checkout, the order information including the buyer's name, address and billing instruction is emailed to your order department (or whomever you choose) and a receipt is sent to the shopper.
Operation Details
The shop.pl program is used for all web pages used in the Shopping Cart. It is passed arguments on the URL path. All the web pages used are parsed by Shopping Cart. The page argument tells the Shopping Cart which HTML page to parse. All of these HTML files used by the Cart software must be in the $shopping_root directory, specified in the shop.cfg file. These HTML pages cannot be in subdirectories of the $shopping_root. Each HTML page is parsed and various tokens are searched for. These tokens tell shop.pl where to put the shopping cart list, the SID number, and other information. The SID number is passed on every URL in the Shopping Cart. This is how the Shopping Cart keeps track of the user. If no SID is passed to shop.pl, then it creates one.

The product information is kept in a text database, which consists of: product number, product i.d., product description, price, and product weight separated by a pipe symbol. This database is searched when the shopping cart list is displayed. It is also searched when the items ordered are mailed to the web administrator.

The customer can be presented with a shopping list, which allows then to add more of the same items or remove items. The shopping list also shows the item descriptions, the item prices, the shipping cost, the subtotal, the tax cost, and the total. The shopping list is shown only if the shopping list token in included in the HTML of the shopping cart pages.

When the customer is done ordering they will checkout using the email form. This form collects data about the customer. This data is emailed to the storefront owner and the customer in a receipt. This receipt of course includes the items ordered, shipping costs, tax, subtotal, and the total. The credit card information is only emailed to the storefront owner.

The credit card information is not emailed to the storefront owner if the Cybercash or Secure modules are in use. This information is either stored in a file on the server (Secure Module) or sent to the Cybercash Server (Cybercash Module).

A search feature is included which allows the customer to search the product database for product descriptions that interest them.

Back to Top

Monstercontrols:   http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/monstercontrols
This is our proprietary web administration system which allows you to perform all aspects of your web site administration. You can add/edit your email redirects and forwards, setup and manage your mailing lists and autoresponders, password protect directories and manage the username/password combinations, download your raw access-logs, manage your site with SiteManager (create, edit and upload files to your web space). You can also change read, write or executable permissions on any of the files or directory in your web site plus much more.
For instructions in using Monstercontrols please see the documentation at
http://www.hostingsupport.com/manual/wba.htm#1

Back to Top

Web-based Mail:   web-based email
Read and compose email using a browser instead of an email client (
http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/wmail/wmail.pl).    Or use Monstercontrols (hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/monstercontrols) and choose "web-based email".


Auction:  A web based auction script allows anyone to easily set up an auction page. Easily configured using the following URL:
http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/auction.cgi
Usage instructions are available at:
http://hostingsupport.com/manual/auction.html#1

Formmail will mail you the results of your forms. To get your form results mailed to you, you have to add a few hidden fields to your html document. 
NOTE:  Please see the FAQ on this page for more info and for special instructions if you're mailing the form results to some address other than your domain.
Usage instructions also are available at:
http://hostingsupport.com/manual/cgib.html#2

Back to Top

Cgiemail is a form processing script that takes the contents of fill-in boxes on a form and mails them to a specified address.
Usage instructions are available at:
http://hostingsupport.com/manual/cgib.html#1

Free For All Link page allows visitors to add links to specified categories. This script is already configured for use by calling the following URL:
http://hostingsupport.com/links/links.htm
The only configuration you may want to do is to customize the look of the links.htm page. Just leave the method and input tags the way they are. If you decide to change the category names, you must do so in the links.htm document, AS WELL AS the links.pl file in your cgi-bin.

Random Text Generator  takes a plain text file, which contains a series of phrases, quotes, lines of text, html tags, etc... and a delimiter (the percent "%" character) which separate each entry) and will randomly choose one of the phrases and display it on your web page. This scripts does require the use of Server Side Includes so each html page that you call it from needs to end with the extension .sht or .shtml.
http://hostingsupport.com/random/random.txt (add text -see example below)
http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/randomtext.cgi  (the script)
Example of random.txt file below.
Phrase one would go here. As much white space or formatting as you want.
 %%
Second Phrase would go here. %% And the next Second line of the next. %%
Next line, and so on...
How to call the randomtext.cgi:
This script must be called as a Server Side Include, or it can also be called on a page by itself (however that is not as nice looking.) Below is an example of how to call this program within an html page using SSI:
<!--#exec cgi="/cgi-bin/randomtext.cgi"-->
That woudl simply call the program from a Server Side Include and the Random Text woud appear in that location on your web page.

Graphical counter:  Simple counter called using "img" tag.  You can edit the count on any page by going to the counter directory off of your main www and changing the number in the txt file of the page you would like to correct.
http://hostingsupport.com/counter

Password Protected Directory:
Sometimes there is information on your Web site you don't want to share with everyone. For this reason we've included a program that enables you to password protect any directory in your Web site.   It is easily set up through Montercontrols(hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/monstercontrols) then click on "password protected directories".   Choose the directory name from the drop-down list of directory names and type in the Authname (Note: this word will show in the box that prompts for Username and Password when pulling up the URL in a browser and must not contain spaces, example = Private),  type in the Username and password and click on the "Protect Directory" button.  To test pull up the subdirectory that you protected.  Example:  if you protected /www/username/secure then pull up http://hostingsupport.com/secure.

Back to Top

Monsterbook
lets you set up as many individual guestbooks as you want! The Master Admin Program lets you (the administrator) easily add, modify, or delete VisitorBooks from your system.

Administrator Options:
Create New VisitorBooks 
Set password for each VisitorBook
Edit VisitorBooks
Delete VisitorBooks

http://hostingsupport.com/monsterbook/admin_login.html
U = admin, P = admin   (be sure to change these after  you login)

Guestbook allows you to set up your own comments page. From there, visitors can add entries to your guestbook and they will be displayed with the most recent at the top and scrolling down, or vice versa. Other options include the ability to limit HTML in the entry, link to e-mail address with mailto tag, use a log to log entries, redirect to a different page after signing, emailing whenever a new entry is added, and much more.
Usage instructions can be found at  http://hostingsupport.com/manual/cgib.html#3.

Back to Top

Click and Go
This script allows you to design a scroll-down menu that will contains links towards which your visitors can be re-directed. That's the same a using a big bunch of links, but this presentation is much shorter. 

To use this script, build a form that looks like this:
<form method="post" action="http://www.hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/clickgo.cgi">
<select name="goto" size="1">
              <option value="www.site1.com">Site 1</option>
              <option value="www.site2.com">Site 2</option>
</select>
<input type="submit" value="GO!">
</form>

Do NOT use the http part of the URL, in the value field.
On the click of the GO! button, the requested page will be loaded on screen.

Back to Top

WWW Board is a threaded World Wide Web discussion forum and message board, which allows users to post new messages, follow-up to existing ones and more. It is already preconfigured for your server. Just go to http://hostingsupport.com/bbs to post your messages there.

To administer the Board use the wwwadmin.pl at http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/wwwadmin.pl.
The Username and Password for initial login should be included in the logins you received in the Order confirmation email.  If you need assistance with changing them please contact Support.

NueQuiz
URL http//hostingsupport.com/nuequiz/password.htm (passwd - nuedream)
To change the password edit the file named password.cgi in directory nuequiz. Change this enty $password = "nuequiz";
Choose to edit an existing quiz or create a new one.
To create a new one, fill in all of the required fields (the question, the answers, checking the correct answer and the reasoning for the answer) and click "Add".
Access the quiz by using the number of the question in the URL as follows:  www.hostingsupport.com/nuequiz/quiz.cgi?expert=1
This will display the first question of the expert quiz.

DP Market
A basic classified ad script.   Users can submit advertisements, which are updated at once and also send to the webmaster if wanted. Setting up and adapting the script is easy and requires no knowledge of Perl/CGI.
Info for running and modifying the script is in /www/user/dp_market/readme.txt


Directory Scan
To create the list of files needed for searching run http://hostingsupport.com/dircsan/dirscan.pl.  This will create the file /www/hostingsupport/dirscan/fileinfo.txt.

Then add the following html code to the web page directly in your /www that you want the search button on.  Note:  be sure to change hostingsupport.com to your domain in the code below
.
<FORM name=search action="dirscan/find.cgi" method="post">
<b>Search my Homepage</b><br>
<INPUT maxLength=128 size=40 name=string>
<INPUT type=submit value="hostingsupport.com" name=Submit>


The search engine receives the input from the CGI form and processes the required files in order to find the search terms.
The list of files is found in /www/user/dirscan/fileinfo.txt. The script would not work if it doesn't get the valid list of files. For compiling the list of files to process use the dirscan.pl utility (so you're actually getting two separate projects, disrcan.pl can be used separately for creating a valid list of your files on the disk).
Search algorithm
For every search term that is found in a file, a file gets one point. Thus if the search string was "really cool perl script", and the opened file contained the word "really" 0 times, word "cool" 3 times, word "perl" 11 times and word "script" 1 time, the resulting point count would be 15 points.
Search engine features
The search engine is case-insensitive, thus "pErl", "Perl", "perl" and "PERL" would be treated the same. The location of the search engine on the system is not sensitive, as long as it can get get to the valid list of files provided in the fileinfo.txt file.
Is it the right one for me?
The search engine is optimized to work with the sites containing up to 300 documents, after that level the performance of the engine tends to be slow (since it has to open every file and count the number of points the file gets). By default it searches the documents with "*.htm" extension, but that can be tweaked in the script.
How do I exclude files from the search?
There is no option to exclude files from the search, if you want them excluded, an option for excluding directories exists in dirscan.pl, if you don't want a specific file to be indexed, exclude it from fileinfo.txt, and do it every time you run dirscan.pl, which basically re-indexes your system and compiles a new list of valid files.
Can I customize the results screen?
The results of the search can be published with the header and the footer, to provide HTML customization, the header and footer should be located in ../search/header.txt and ../search/footer.txt, if you don't need a header and a footer, comment out the function calls print_header() and print_footer() in find.pl.
How the results are published?
The results are published as the filenames on your Unix machine, not as the titles.


DP Tellafriend
Letting visitors recommend your site to others  is a great way of getting more and more visitors. This script uses a standard text-file as template, which not only makes setting it up a lot easier, but also makes changing the "look and feel" of the email very easy.
http//www.hostingsupport.com/dp_tellafriend/tellafriend.html   Just insert your domain name instead of hostingsupport.com.
Edit the files "tellafriend.html" and "tellafriend_ok.html"  to make them fit the rest of your website. Please note the 2 hidden fields on "tellafriend.html": 
"resurl", which tells the script where to send the visitor after sending 
the email, and "subject", which holds the subject/hedaline of the email.

Edit the file "tellafriend.txt" in the /dp_tellafriend/scripts directory. The file contains the text used in the email. In the text, you may use a number of special tags as listed below:

##TO_NAME## The name of the receiver
##TO_EMAIL## The email address of the receiver
##FROM_NAME## The name of the person, who sent the email
##COMMENT## The comment (if entered)

Also remember to insert your own email address in the line:
$from_email = 'mail@yourdomain.com';
Now it's time to get the script 'on the air' !
Files:   /dp_tellafriend/tellafriend.html and tellafriend_ok.html
/dp_tellafriend/scripts/tellafriend.txt and tellafriend.pl
Finally at your main page add a link to "tellafriend.html" and recommendation is on the way.

Guardian
Sends email to your default address whenever someone receives any of the following errors when accessing your site. The 4 lines below need to be in a file named .htaccess in your main /www directory. That file needs to have the permission of chmod 644 (rw-r--r--).
Note that the Referer feature won't work unless you have referer logs installed.
ErrorDocument 401 /guardian/guardian.cgi?401
ErrorDocument 403 /guardian/guardian.cgi?403
ErrorDocument 404 /guardian/guardian.cgi?404
ErrorDocument 500 /guardian/guardian.cgi?500
Apache Guardian alerts you of the "backdoor" visitors who would otherwise go unnoticed.  Find more info at http://hostingsupport.com/guardian/index.html  (replace hostingsupport.com with your own domain name).

NewsPro
http//hostingsupport.com/newspro/newspro.cgi (change to your own domain name)
First time login Username = setup, Password is left blank
This takes you to a page to enter your choice of Username, Password and email address. Click continue and complete the setup process.
At this stage NewsPro should be fully installed and working. Go back to http//hostingsupport.com/newspro/newspro.cgi and add a news item.
The next step it to make your web pages work with NewsPro.
When you Submit News to NewsPro it is stored in a database file. Build News takes the news entries from the database and builds them into web-usable files. If you install addons, you may end up building several files in several different locations, but NewsPro always builds a file called news.txt in your /newspro directory.

news.txt contains HTML but is not a complete web page and should not be viewed directly in a web browser. It is designed to be included into an HTML page (often your site's home page).

SSI (server side includes) is used to add the text to your web page. When you include an SSI in your web page, you are telling the server to merge together two separate files before showing your page to the person visiting your site.
In order to use SSI in a web page, you will need to give the page an extension of .shtml rather than .html.
The exact SSI code you use to include news.txt depends on where news.txt is located in relation to the HTML file it is being included it. If both files are in the same directory, use

<!--#include virtual="news.txt" -->


in your HTML file at the point where you'd like your news to appear.
If your HTML file and news.txt are in different directories, use the relative URL from your HTML file to news.txt. For instance, if the locations of the respective files are http//www.yoursite.com/index.html and http//www.yoursite.com/newspro/news.txt, use

<!--#include virtual="newspro/news.txt" -->

NOTE don't forget to change the index.html file name to index.shtml

(Be sure that you've submitted and built news, otherwise there's nothing to include.)
Once news.txt is being generated and included into your page, you should have a working news system set up. If you post a news item, it will appear on your page. NewsPro is capable of much more than this. You can change what your news items look like, you can archive news items and create different categories of news.
For complete documentation see http//amphibianweb.com/newspro/docs/newspro_documentation.html


2B Guestbook
To administer the guestbook, default passwd = "web".   To change the password modify the file /cgi-bin/2bguest.pl and change the word "web" to one of your own choosing in the line below (note there are two lines like the one below that need to be changed in the file).
$pass = "web";
hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/2bguest/2badmin.pl?action=login
To sign/view guestbook
hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/2bguest/2bguest.pl?action=home


Random Link Generator
A random link generator with an admin URL used to add and delete links, get the HTML code and test drive the random link. Visitors can also add their own sites through the browser. Change hostingsupport.com to your own domain name in the URLs below.
Add a randon link URL: http://hostingsupport.com/rando/add.html
Admin URL: http://hostingsupport.com/rando/rando.cgi?123456
Note: To change the password "123456" modify the rando.cgi file in the rando subdirectory
.

Random Image Generator
URL: http://hostingsupport.com/randomage/randimg.html (change hostingsupport.com to your domain name)
Upload pictures to the following directory: /www/user/randomage/pics
(.png, .gif and .jpg filetypes are supported)
Features: 
+Display random images
+Can be called via <IMG> tag
<IMG SRC="http://www.hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/randomage/randimg.cgi">
This will successfully take a random image from the /randomage/pics directory and display it.
+Supports multiple graphic types
+Small filesize


Search.cgi
Search will look at all your html pages for words you enter, and return all pages on a list with links. This program is completely configured and ready to run at http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi.

There is a configuration file called search_define.pl  in your cgi-bin which accompanies search.cgi and sets up the variables for it. You can customize which files you wish to exclude from searches, and also the cosmetics of the search and results pages.
To exclude files from the search add the file name(s) to search_define.pl in your /cgi-bin in the entry for @unwanted_files.

Back to Top

Boutique Single Page Shopping Cart
There is a Single Page Shopping Cart program installed on your server. You can see what it looks like by going to this URL with your browser: http://hostingsupport.com/shop/boutique.html
Note:  This script is not easily configured to work with the Secure Server.
.
Modifying Boutique Files.
The following web pages make up your shopping application:

PRODUCT PAGE -
This page, (http://hostingsupport.com/shop/boutique.html), displays the products from which your shopper may choose. Edit this page in any manner you choose, just being careful to maintain the four major parts of the html tags that interact with the program:
Call to program - this is the opening form statement where the "action" is a call to the /www/username/cgi-bin/shop/boutique.cgi program.
Products Listings - you will see nine separate parameters that must be used to define each product....the value of each parameter may be anything you choose, or they may also be equal to ("") nothing. All nine, however, must be used for each product listed on the page.
Customer Information - this section is used to collect your shopper shipping and payment information. You may collect any amount and type of information you desire, being sure to repeat the field names on the saleslip.html page for presentation of this information to your customer.
Customer options - this section contains a hidden input line, sending the program a value for "Operation" and the "submit" button.
saleslip.html -
This page presents the final sales slip to your shopper, indicating products purchased and giving a total order summary. Notice that certain sections on this page interact with the program, and are expressed as hidden input lines. However, all sections with are involved in displaying data on the web page may be designed in any manner you choose. Just carry the field names from your product page forward on this saleslip page for display.
thankyou.html -
This page will present the order number to the customer and is the final and ending page for the shopping experience.

Back to Top

Banner Wheel Industrial - http://hostingsupport.com/bwi/docs
A powerful advertising program that offers the ablility to have several clients advertise on your website, with each client containing an unlimited amount of ads or "banners".



What are all the files and directories in my home directory?

www................This is your web directory. Place all your web files in there.

infobots..........This is where you will need to put all your infobot text files. More Info

anonftp...........This is your anonymous ftp directory. More Info

.redirect..........This is the configuration file for mail aliases.
More Info


How do I run my own CGI programs?



Put your CGI programs in the cgi-bin directory.

A special note - this does not apply to frontpage webs, follow normal cgi instructions




How do I use cgiemail and  Formmail?


CGIemail:This is a program that will email you the forms filled out from the web.

Here's an example -

Create a text file called "example" in the main web directory.
This is the content of the file:


To: joe@blue.com
Subject: example


This is a test message.
This is a test message.
name: [name]
phone: [phone]



That is the file that will be sent to joe@blue.com.
Now, cgiemail will automatically replace [name], [phone], anything
in the brackets with the corresponding user supplied info from the web
form. Also, you MUST have the To: and the Subject: line followed by
the blank line. Those three lines MUST be on the FIRST THREE lines. You
cannot change the From: address.

Here is a part of the web form page called "example.html"

<form method="post" action="/cgi-bin/cgiemail/example"> <input type="text" name="name" size="20">Your name? <input type="text" name="phone" size="20">your number? etc...

If you want to have your own customized "success" page, place the following
line in your form page:

<input type="hidden" name="success" value="http://hostingsupport.com/somepage.html">
It will then redirect to somepage.html.

Formmail is a very easy to use form processor, simply place the following on any page after entering your domain.

<FORM METHOD=POST ACTION="http://hostingsupport.com/cgi-bin/formmail.cgi">
<input type=hidden name="recipient" value="sales@hostingsupport.com">
<input type=hidden name="subject" value="Order">
<input type=hidden name="return_link_url" value="http://hostingsupport.com/">
<input type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to Main Page">

Be sure to replace hostingsupport, with your real domain name

Full Formmail instructions click here

 



How do I use the anonymous ftp site?

Your anonymous ftp site is completely different from your web site.

When people ftp to your domain anonymously, they will see the following
directories:

bin/ dev/ etc/ incoming/ lib/ pub/

"pub" is where you should put all your anonymously accessible files.
"incoming" is for the anonymous users to upload files.

For security the following applies

Setting permissions

"Hey, how do I stop people who are not in my group from reading a directory?"

Type chmod o-r directory while you are in the directory above it.

"I don't care if people in my group can read my directory, but I don't want them to write in it!"

Type chmod g-w directory while you are in the directory above it.

"Who is in my group?"

In general, each domain has its own group. If you find you are in the group users, let us know if you wish for your domain to have its own group.

"Tell me more about permissions, they sound neat!"

To list the access permissions of a file or directory, type ls -ls *. r=read access, x=execute access, w=write access. The first three letters apply to you, the second three letters apply to your group, the last three letters apply to everyone else. Execute access enables you to run programs or enter directories.

Examples of using chmod:

    PEOPLE                                    PERMISSIONS
    u = the file's user (or owner)            r = read access
    g = the file's group                      x = execute access
    o = others                                w = write access
    a = the user, the group, and others.

    chmod a+w =  let everyone write to the file
    chmod go-r = don't let people in the file's group or others to read
                 the file
    chmod g+x =  let people in the file's group execute the file
Don't have permission to access /
This error message means that you are missing your index.html file.

Note that files that start with a "." are hidden files. To see them, type ls -al at shell prompt.

If you wish to ftp this file in, go to the /home/fred directory assuming your userid is fred.

 

I get a forbidden when trying to access my site
This error is generally because you have not placed a default page in the main directory.
A default page must be called index.htm, or default.htm and it should be your main page