FREE WWWBoard Script

WWWBoard is a free interactive message board that allows visitors to read, post, and respond to messages in an interactive news group type forum. To maintain the message board's content, the site webmaster will have password-protected access to an administrative interface

Installing a WWWBoard Message Board

  1. Go to your domain's Control Panel by typing the following in the Address text box in your web browser:

    www.<your_domain>/stats/

    Be sure to replace "<your_domain>" with your actual domain. For example, if your domain was "wishbonevertigo", you would type "www.wishbonevertigo.com".

  2. When prompted, enter your username and password. Then, click OK.
  3. In Control Panel, click Add a Forum.
  4. On the WWWBoard Installation page, answer "Install WWWBoard?" by clicking Yes. A configuration page will be displayed.
  5. On the configuration page, provide a descriptive title for your message board and select which options you want your message board to use. 
  6. Click Submit. A page confirming the installation and lnternet address of your message board will be displayed.

That's all there is to it -- your new message board is now installed! Now, to offer its use to your site visitors, just include your message board's Internet address (as provided in Step 6) on your web page(s).

Administering Your Message Board

From your administration page, you can remove messages (files) from your message board as well as change your administrator password. To administer your message board, go to:

http://www.<your_domain>/cgi-local/wwwadmin.pl


Be sure to replace "<your_domain>" with your actual domain name. 


Special Notes

 

WWWBoard Advanced Issues

The instructions provided below are for persons who want either to modify the scripts that were installed by the Add a Forum process or to install multiple versions of the WWWBoard message board.

  1. Locate and download the following files from Matt's Script Archive:
  2. Change the first line of each Perl script to reflect the official path to Perl on our server:

    #!/usr/local/bin/perl(edit nos. 1 & 2 above)

  3. There are a few more things that need to be changed in each Perl script:

    # Define Variables (wwwboard.pl)

    $basedir - The system location of your WWWBoard directory
    $baseurl - The URL to the WWWBoard directory
    $cgi_url - The URL to the WWWBoard script

    The first variable calls for a system path which is not the same as a URL. If your domain name was yourdomain.com the system path would be /u/web/yourdo where "yourdo" is the account userid. As such, the Define Variables section of the wwwboard script would follow this format:

    # Define Variables (wwwboard.pl)

    $basedir - "/u/web/<userid>/wwwboard";
    $baseurl - "http://www.yourdomain.com/wwwboard";
    $cgi_url - "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-local/wwwboard.pl";

    Be sure to substitute your domain name and userid in the example above. Although Matt's code is accurate, we recommend using the Perl Script checker within your account Control Panel when installing any Perl script.

  4. The Define Variables section of the wwwadmin script must also be set. Note the only difference is that the $cgi_url variable reflects the URL to the wwwadmin script instead.

    # Define Variables (wwwadmin.pl)

    $basedir - "/u/web/<userid>/wwwboard";
    $baseurl - "http://www.yourdomain.com/wwwboard";
    $cgi_url - http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-local/wwwadmin.pl;

  5. Upload the "wwwboard.pl" and "wwwadmin.pl" scripts to your cgi-local directory in ASCII transfer mode. Cgi-local will place the appropriate permissions on files uploaded to this directory so you do NOT need to chmod 755 either Perl script.
  6. Modify the form ACTION attribute within "wwwboard.html" to reference the wwwboard script within cgi-local as shown below and upload to your root ("home") directory.

    <FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-local/wwwboard.pl">

  7. Create a subdirectory named "wwwboard" off the root directory of your web site and upload "wwwboard.html", "data.txt", and "passwd.txt" to the this directory in ASCII transfer mode.
  8. Create a directory named "messages" under the newly made directory "wwwboard".

    e.g.  /wwwboard/messages

  9. Select the File Manager option within your account Control Panel. Locate the directory named wwwboard . Click the box marked "PW" to the left of the wwwboard directory name to enable public write access.
  10. Next, click the directory name to display files within the wwwboard directory. Set public write access for both the wwwboard.html and data.txt files as well as the messages directory. This will allow the Perl script to append data to both wwwboard.html file and data file.


You can test the script by referencing the wwwboard.html file through the Internet.

Special Notes