allposters.pl (c)2001-2006 Cusimano.Com Corporation, all rights reserved Documentation: http://www.c3scripts.com/allposters Note: This program is not free; see the above URL. Support: FAQ's: http://www.c3scripts.com/allposters/faq.html web: http://www.c3scripts.com/support forum: http://www.c3scripts.com/forum ================================================================ --- Installation Instructions v7.06.22 --- NOTE: The allposters.pl script is not a script such as a "guestbook" script. The allposters.pl script is a "run once" type of script. You run allposters.pl and it creates HTML files -- it does not create dynamic output "on the fly". IMPORTANT: You do not run allposters.pl via your web browser. You must either (1) run it via telnet or SSH on your webserver, or (2) run it on your Windows PC and then upload the created files to your webserver. NOTE: If you are upgrading from a previous version of allposters.pl, replace the following files: allposters.pl, allposters.ini, and the files in the allposters-data directory. Be sure to edit the allposters.ini file and re-enter your AllPosters.com ID (as well as any other changes you want). *** IMPORTANT: The allposters.pl script runs in "demo" mode if it cannot find an allposters-key.txt file. In demo mode, all poster links will not contain your AllPosters.com ID and all poster links will go to the AllPosters.com home page. To request an allposters-key.txt file, fill in the form at: http://www.c3scripts/allposters/key IF YOU HAVE A LINUX/UNIX SERVER WITH SHELL ACCESS: allposters.pl can be run directly on your Linux/unix server if you have telnet or SSH access to your server's command shell prompt. OTHERWISE: If you do not have telnet or SSH access, you can run allposters.pl in an MS-DOS window on your Windows PC and then upload the created HTML files to your web server using FTP. Note: If you select "all categories", then the scripts creates about 10,500 HTML files (about 140MB) that you then must upload to your web server. Depending upon the speed of your internet connection, it may take you 5-24 hours to uplaod 10,500 HTML files. Installation instructions for both of these situations is provided below. Do one or the other; you do not have to install allposters.pl on both your PC and your web server. ================================================================ --- PC installation --- Follow these instructions to install allposters.pl on your Windows PC. (Note: you do not have to install allposters.pl on both your PC and on your web server; just do one or the other). * If you don't have a Perl interpreter on your Windows PC, then install ActivePerl from http://www.c3scripts.com/activeperl This is free. NOTE: Use ActivePerl v5.6.1 build 635; some problems have been reported when using ActivePerl v5.8 See the tutorial "How to install ActivePerl" at Also see the tutorial "How to use an MS-DOS window" at * Make a directory where you want to unpack and build everything. We recommend creating a directory called c:\www\allposters In the future, if you use another of our other scripts, you could then put it in c:\www\SCRIPTNAME So, make a c:\www if you don't already have one: mkdir c:\www Then, make a directory in there called allposters: mkdir c:\www\allposters * Unpack the .zip file into c:\www\allposters using compression software such as WinZip (www.winzip.com) or equivalent Zip software. * Make a subdirectory called "posters" where the created HTML files will be written to: mkdir c:\www\allposters\posters * Type the following two commands (press Enter after each) to get into the c:\www\allposters directory. c: cd \www\allposters The first command puts you into the c: hard drive; the second command puts you into the \www\allposters directory. * Use Notepad to edit allposters.ini (or whatever text editor you use). You can type the following command to run the Notepad text editor: notepad allposters.ini * In allposters.ini, change the following values if necessary: rooturl /posters rootdir posters The value of rooturl is the partial URL where posters will be online. If you have other content on your website, you might want to put all the posters in a "/posters" directory so they are accessible online as "www.domainname.com/posters". If your website is just posters then you might want to set "rooturl /" so the posters are directly at "www.domainname.com". The value of rootdir is the relative path to where poster files will be created on your PC. You can include a drive and directory name (e.g.: c:\myfiles\myposters) or just a directory name in which case it is relative to the location where the allposters.pl file is located (e.g.: posters). * The value of "categories" defaults to 0 which means all posters. Initially set this to "categories 622" for Animals posters only. This is a relativley small category and will allow you to test that everything works. * If you use our Associate Engine ae.pl script, you can use it to display keyword-related amazon.com products with the posters. To do this, set the amazonpl configuration variable in the allposters.ini configuration file. * Save the allposters.ini file and exit your text editor. * Type "perl allposters.pl" to run it and it will output status as it runs. NOTE: You must be in the c:\www\allposters directory when you run the allposters.pl script. If you are not already in the c:\www\allposters directory, type the command: cd \www\allposters NOTE: If you want to test to see if ActivePerl is installed, type the command: perl -v You should see a few lines of information such as "This is perl, v5.8.0 ....." (or something similar) rather than a "command not found" error. The time it takes for the allposters.pl script to finish will depend upon how many poster categories you selected. For "all categories", expect a run time of at least 40 minutes to 1 hour (depending up the speed of your computer). * Using FTP, make directory "posters" on your server in your HTML directory. Then upload the entire posters directory to your server. * In your web browser, look at www.DOMAINNAME.com/posters * Now that everything works, you can customize the look and feel by either using a different set of template files that come with the package or edit the templates using your HTML editor. To pick one of the other sets, change the line in allposters.ini that says: templatedir allposters-template/beige Change the value at the right to one of these: allposters-template/blue allposters-template/blue2 allposters-template/green allposters-template/red allposters-template/red2 If you want to modify these, you might want to make a copy such as "allposters-template/custom" and then modify those files. Then set: templatedir allposters-template/custom * To add more posters, change the "categories" to either 0 (to get all posters), or add more categories numbers. Such as "categories 101,122". To determine categories numbers, scroll down in the .ini file to where the catdir lines are. You can see the numbers on those lines. You can also say "categories 0" and then add "catremote [number],[number],..." for those poster categories that you want listed in the index but linked remotely (i.e.: no HTML files created for these). E.g.: categories 0 catremote 622,136,1329 * Once you've modified your templates or changed alllposters.ini, re-run allposters.pl and then re-upload the new files. ================================================================ --- Linux/unix installation --- Follow these instructions to install allposters.pl on your web server. (Note: you do not have to install allposters.pl on both your PC and on your web server; just do one or the other). * Make subdirectory "allposters" inside your cgi-bin directory (Note: Some web servers use a "cgi-local" directory rather than a "cgi-bin" directory. In that case, use "cgi-local" rather than "cgi-bin" in the following instructions.) * Upload the allposters-######.tar.gz file to /cgi-bin/allposters * Login using telnet or SSH to the shell command prompt. * cd to the root directory of your web server - this may be your login directory - or it might be called "public_html" * Type "mkdir posters" (posters will be at www.DOMAINNAME.com/posters) * cd to cgi-bin/allposters * To unpack the files, type following command: gunzip -d -c allposters*.tar.gz | tar xvf - * Edit the allposters.ini file by using the following command (or using whatever text editor you use): vi allposters.ini * Change the following if necessary: rooturl /posters rootdir ../../posters The value of rooturl is the partial URL where posters will be online. If you have other content on your website, you might want to put all the posters in a "/posters" directory so they are accessible online as "www.domainname.com/posters". If your website is just posters then you might want to set "rooturl /" so the posters are directly at "www.domainname.com". The value of rootdir is the path to where poster files will be created. You can specify a relative path (e.g.: ../../posters) or an absolute path (e.g.: /usr/home/mysite/posters). Relative paths are relative to the directory where the allposters.pl file is located. * The value of "categories" defaults to 0 which means all posters. Initially set this to "categories 622" for Animals posters only. This is a relativley small category and will allow you to test that everything works. * Save the allposters.ini file and exit your text editor. * First line of allposters.pl indicates where Perl is on your server. #!/usr/local/bin/perl - Change this line if necessary. - If you don't know the path, type "which perl". * Type "perl allposters.pl" to run it and it will output status as it runs. Depending upon the categories you select and the speed of your server, the script will run for several minutes to an hour or more. If you use a dial-up connection to the internet, you might want to run the script using the Linux/unix "nohup" (no hangup) command: nohup perl allposters.pl & Note that the & at the end is required so that the process is run in the background. Status output is sent to the allposters.log file. On some Linux systems output also appears on the screen; if that does not happen with your server, then you can type "tail -n50 -f allposters.log" to view the log file (press ctrl-C to stop viewing). When you use this "nohup ..." command you can then hangup (the script will keep running) and you can then reconnect later. When you reconnect later, cd to the directory where the allposters.log file is located then use "tail -n50 -f allposters.log" to view the log file (press ctrl-C to stop viewing). * If you use our Associate Engine ae.pl script, you can use it to display keyword-related amazon.com products with the posters. To do this, set the amazonpl configuration variable in the allposters.ini configuration file. * In your web browser, look at www.DOMAINNAME.com/posters * Now that everything works, you can customize the look and feel by either using a different set of template files that come with the package or edit the templates using your HTML editor. To pick one of the other sets, change the line in allposters.ini that says: templatedir allposters-template/beige Change the value at the right to one of these: allposters-template/blue allposters-template/blue2 allposters-template/green allposters-template/red allposters-template/red2 If you want to modify these, you might want to make a copy such as "allposters-template/custom" and then modify those files. Then set: templatedir allposters-template/custom * To add more posters, change the "categories" to either 0 (to get all posters), or add more categories numbers. Such as "categories 101,122". To determine categories numbers, scroll down in the .ini file to where the catdir lines are. You can see the numbers on those lines. You can also say "categories 0" and then add "catremote [number],[number],..." for those poster categories that you want listed in the index but linked remotely (i.e.: no HTML files created for these). E.g.: categories 0 catremote 622,136,1329 * Once you've modified your templates or changed alllposters.ini, re-run allposters.pl ================================================================ [end]