Project 3 - Guestbook Installation
Overview
As a freelance web programmer, at least 75% of my work involves
installing, modifying, and troubleshooting scripts written
by someone else. With the extensive script archives available
at a mouse-click, there is really no reason to rewrite most
basic CGI applications. So, for this project you will be installing
a well-known guestbook script and modifying it to suit our
purposes.
Preparation
Objectives
- Go through a typical script installation
- Practice modifying a pre-written script
- Understand the interface between HTML forms and CGI scripts
Script Details
Download and install Selena Sol's Guestbook (** this script
is no longer available from Selena Sol's website, so you'll
need to download the tar file from here).
After the guestbook is working, modify the script to allow
the signer to choose a font color for their comments in the
guestbook. Note that the comments in the guestbook should
be colored, not the comments on the "Thank you"
page.
Important Note: The sendmail utility is not available
on the ACC web servers, so the mail features of the guestbook
script will not function if you are doing your project there.
You will need to make the following changes to the script
to disable the mail functions and avoid errors:
Set both $remote_mail and $mail = "no" in the
setup file
Comment out the require line in guestbook.cgi:
# require "$mail_lib_location";
Demo
script
Project Submission
You should have a link to the functional script from your
main project website. Email the text of the script and the
working URL to cgi@iteachu.com
by the deadline date in the schedule.
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