AutoRank Pro v2.1.0 Installation Manual[ Installation ] | [ After Installation ] | [ HTML Template Feature ][ Templates ] | [ Cron Help ] | [ Tech Support ] Installation Procedure If you are upgrading from AutoRank Pro v2.0.x or AutoRank v2.0.0 please use the instructions in upgrade.html.
Locate Perl 5 on your server. In most cases it can be found at /usr/bin/perl or /usr/local/bin/perl. Once you have found it, and are sure it is Perl 5, write the location down. If your Perl 5 location is /usr/bin/perl, you can skip to the next step. If not, open all of the files that have a .cgi extension in a text editor. You will need to set the location of Perl 5 on your server. This is done on the first line of the file: #!/usr/bin/perl Change the /usr/bin/perl value to match your system's setup. If you have telnet access you can locate perl by typing the following command: which perl In most cases, /usr/bin/perl or /usr/local/bin/perl is a valid setting. Note that this must point to Perl 5. Ask your server administrator if you are unsure about the perl location. Login to your FTP server, and change into the directory where you will be installing the CGI scripts. (We recommend that this directory be inside a cgi-bin or equivalent directory) In that directory, create 3 more directories. Name them members, sdata, and templates. These directories will contain all of the files that control script operation. The HTML files that the script creates (the files that contain the list) will need to be in a seperate directory located outside of the cgi-bin. Example Directory Structure
Now, upload all of the .cgi files to the directory that you want them installed in. Make sure that you are uploading in ASCII mode. Next, upload the errors.dat, help.dat, def.html, quick.html, and search.html files to the sdata directory that you created - again in ASCII mode. Finally, upload all of the .htmlt and .etmpl files to the templates directory that you created - in ASCII mode. You will now need to set permissions on the files you uploaded, and directories that you created. Below you will see a table with recommended permissions settings. These settings should work for most servers, however others may require different settings.
You are now ready to begin the WWW based portion of the setup. In your browser, type in the full URL to the setup.cgi file on your server. This will bring up the portion of the script where you will set all of the variables. Details and examples for each variable are given, so follow along through that to get all of the variables set properly. After you have set all of the variables, enter the default password admin and click the button. If everything went well, you will be presented with a page telling you that the variables have been recorded, and some self tests will be done by the script. If all the tests pass, you are ready to go on. If any of them fail, you will need to check file permissions and directory settings. You should now be ready to begin using the scripts. The first thing you will want to do is point your browser to admin.cgi. Login using the default password admin - make sure you press the login button with your mouse pointer and don't simply hit enter on your keyboard. Once inside the admin script you can start exploring the features, but make sure that you change your administrative password soon after your initial installation. In the administrative script, you will find links to "help" near the bottom of each page. Clicking on that help link will bring up a description of the function you are working with Other Installation Notes
Once you have completed the installation you will want to get the list setup and ready to accept new members. Here we will outline the steps you will want to take immediately following the installation.
Editing the header/footer Editing the header and footer for each of your list pages will setup the HTML that appears above and below the rankings. All HTML entered in the header will appear above the list; all HTML entered in the footer will appear below the list. Any HTML you want can be entered here, with the exception of a textarea tag. Typically your header will contain the opening html, title, and body tags, as well as links to accounts.cgi and accounts.cgi?login so that webmasters can add and edit their accounts. The header and footer do contain some template values. These will display the last updated time, # of members in your database, and the site of the moment. More information about setting these up is found in the templates.html file. See the portion labled "Edit HTML For [page]" template in admin.cgi Editing the HTML template A complete description on how to generate your template can be found in the template.html file included with the distribution. There is also some additional information in templates.html which reinforces what was explained in the template.html file. We will breifly discuss it here as well. The template allows you to insert your own style of how to list the sites. In the template form, you will enter the HTML that will be used for a SINGLE rank. The script will then use that HTML for each of the sites in your database. For most applications, each of the template variables should only appear ONCE in the template. If you find yourself inserting #%BANNER%#, #%DESC%#, or any of the script values more than once in the template, you are most likely doing something wrong. After HTML is setup for all of your list pages, you can re-rank the list for the first time. Do this from the administrative script. It is the first function available from the first pull down menu. Note that you should always let the script create the html files. If they already exist on the server, you should delete them before re-ranking the list. Once you have successfully re-ranked the list, you can view the output on the HTML files you selected to have the list written to. The next thing you will probably want to do is edit the templates for the accounts.cgi script. These are all located in the templates directory, and can be edited with any HTML editor. Each of the files contains normal HTML, and special items that the script recognizes. The special values that the script understands are surrounded by #%%#. You should never edit those values; you can move them around all you want, but don't change anything between the #%%#. Complete descriptions of each of the templates is included on templates.html which is included with the software distribution. The final thing you may want to do, if you are using double CGI cheat protection, is to generate a custom version of the rankem.cgi script. This will allow you to have a customized version of the gateway page that matches your site. A complete description of this can be found at the owners lounge, where you will generate the customized version of the script.
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