Installation Documentation
AUTOMATIC BOOKMARK


System Requirements

  • Perl 5

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 automark.cgi

There is only one cgi file to configure and 2 variables (defined below).  Open up automark.cgi with a text editor (NOT A WORD PROCESSOR) and change the variables below

  • $bookmarkurl = "/scripts/index.html"; 

    $bookmarkurl is the url you want the users bookmark to point to.  This does NOT have to be the same url that the script is executing from.

  • $bookmarktitle = "NEW SCRIPTS EVERY MONTH!";

$bookmarktitle is the name of the bookmark as it will appear in the surfer's browser (eg:  under "Favorites")

Upload automark.cgi and set permissions

Upload automark.cgi into your cgi-bin and set the permission on the script to 755

Create a special welcome page (index.html frames page)

Edit the index.html page so <frame name="main" src="/index.html"> points to the url of the main page of your site.  Next edit <frame name="footer" scrolling="no" noresize target="main" src="http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/automark.cgi"> so it points to automark.cgi on your site.  Now when a person first visits your website the page looks exactly the same.  If they are first time visitors the BOOKMARK POPUP WINDOW will appear. 

Other ideas for grabbing more bookmarks!

Java Close Window  You can also use other ways to execute the scripts such as the popular "CLOSE WINDOW" type scripts that cause windows to popup when exiting the browser.  Just point the url of the new window directly to the frames page or automark.cgi.

404 Redirection  Another good idea is to redirect all of your ERROR traffic (i.e. 404 page not found) so it goes to the automark page. 

Promoting the automark page  Use the automark (index.html) url in your promotions to get the maximum "RETAINED" traffic.  If you ever use any professional traffic analysis software you will generally find nearly 50% or MORE of the people hitting your home page leave immediately.  The average visitor to a website only views 3-4 pages and only 10% revisit your site.  The automarker.cgi will definitely make a difference as many people will simply bookmark your site because they don't know what they are doing!