Q:
Hi! I am having major issues. I am a WYSIWYG designer by nature and
working with code scares me, I am willing to learn though and have been
trying! I am in the middle of trying to do my first form, a very simple
one at that, and it has been a nightmare! The site I am working on, is
being hosted through www.excell.net, which is a Windows2000 based server
rather than a Unix server, it has an SMTP mail server and does not support
sendmail. I simply cannot get my form to work! The server tech guy
insisted I use www.bignosebird.com and their bnbform.cgi script rather
than something like formail.pl . He sent me an example of a form used on
the excell.net site. I downloaded the bnbform.cgi script and readme files,
changed the two fields in bnbform.cgi I was supposed to in the script,
uploaded it to the proper folder in my website directory, and edited the
code (I thought I did this all properly) for the HTML page that the form
is on. When I tested the form, it bumped me to the "oops this form was not
sent" page that I created... so I know that at least the form "not_ok"
setion of the html code is working that sends me to the oops page I made.
I am at my wits end.
The only thing I could not do which may be the problem, was that the
bignosebird directions stated that I had to change the permissions. I use
ws_ftp and was unable to keep permission changed settings because of the
type of server (Windows2000). When I try and change the permissions (to
755 as suggested) it says you can only use chmod for UNIX servers... and
doesn't let me keep the settings, giving me a "remote server does not
accept this" kind of error and bumps it back to the default settings... do
you think that that is why my form isn't working? Please help, I am
desperate. I just want it to work and send the form results to me! If
someone shows me something I own it and can do it forever, but no one
seems to want to help! I would be so appreciative if you could help. I can
send you the script itself if needed, here is the link to the page with
the form on it (and yes I know the folder is user-cgi instead of cgi-bin,
this was following the form the server sent me) This link isn't linked off
of the main site, it only works if you type it in directly or click on the
link... so the general public can't see it.
http://www.naplesarearentals.com/propsearch2.html
Thank you so much, I know I've been wordy, I hope I explained it ok. thank
you thank you thank you!
A:
Heater!
Windows and UNIX have quite different security system and therefore saying
'chmod 0777' on Windows is something said in Chinese to you or to me.
File security setting can be an issue, but this is not likely. Windows
servers ususally set up in a way that more than enough permissions are
available for the web servers and also for other applications. This is one
reason why Windows servers are hacked many times.
Thus: altough it is possible that you face problem with security setting
it is not likely.
I would rather seek in your situation some other setup problem. You
can/should not use sendmail in the form mail, only SMTP directly.
You should start with some simpler program at first. With something that
only prints something on the browser. For example:
print "Content-type: text/html\n\nHello!";
as simplest Perl script.
Regards,
Peter
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