EZMBGEN - easy message board generator, by manny juan 11/5/2000

EZMBGEN INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
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ASSUMPTIONS
        your home base directory is
                path=   /home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website
                URL=    http://www.isp.com/website

        your cgi url is:
                URL=    http://www.isp.com/website/cgi-bin

        you want to store your message boards in a subdirectory called 'mb'.
        note: each message board will be a subdirectory beneath 'mb'.

then you should do the following:

SETUP
        1. create the subdirectory 'mb' under the home base directory and chmod to 777
        2. unzip EZMBGEN.zip to the 'mb' directory
        3. move all the perl scripts (*.pl) and smtp_mail.lib to the cgi-bin directory
           and chmod them to 755

INDEX.HTML
        1. supply correct URL for the logo 
                (ie. IMG SRC=http://www.isp.com/website/mb/mjmall.jpg)
        2. supply correct URL for the cgi script.  for example:
                <form action="http://www.isp.com/website/cgi-bin/ezmbgen.pl" method="POST">
        3. do above two more times for the 'edit page' and 'delete page' buttons.
        4. keep the <!--begin--> line in the page. DO NOT REMOVE!
        5. chmod to 777

USERS.TXT (list of users) 
        1. (initially empty)
        2. chmod to 777

SUPERUSER.DB 
        1. (initially empty)
        2. chmod to 777

MBMCFG.PL (configuration values)
        1. where will the message boards be created? (path)
            $basedir = "/home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website/mb";
        2. what is the URL of above?
            $baseurl = "http://www.isp.com/website/mb";
        3. what's the URL of the message update script, message view and admin scripts? 
            $cgi="http://www.isp.com/website/cgi-bin/mbmsg.pl";
            $cgi2="http://www.isp.com/website/cgi-bin/mbview.pl";
            $cgi3="http://www.isp.com/website/cgi-bin/mbadmin.pl";
        4. do you use file-locking?  (win95 web servers do not)
            $flock="y";
        5. how do you invoke the sendmail program?
            $mailprog="/usr/sbin/sendmail -t";

MBMGCFG.PL (configuration values)
        (no change required)

MBVIEW.PL (message view script)
        1. path to the superuser.db file
                $superuser="/home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website/mb/superuser.db";

MBMSG.PL (message update script)
        1. path to the superuser.db file
                $superuser="/home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website/mb/superuser.db";

MBADMIN.PL (message board admin script)
        1. path to the superuser.db file
                $superuser="/home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website/mb/superuser.db";

EZMBGEN.PL (message board generator script)
        (you might have to change the extension to .cgi depending on your server)
        1. make sure first line of script points to location of perl program
                #!/usr/bin/perl
        2. where will the message boards be created? (path)
                $base_dir = "/home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website/mb";
        3. what is the URL of the cgi-bin directory?
                $cgiurl = "http://www.isp.com/website/cgi-bin";
        4. what is the URL of the message board directory?
                $baseurl = "http://www.isp.com/website/mb";
        5. what is the complete path to the index page? (path)
                $indexpage = "/home/htdocs/your.isp.com/website/mb/index.html";
        6. where is your email program
                $sendmail = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';
        7. your email  (use apostrophe not quote)
                $myemail = 'email@isp.com';

NOTE: the file USERS.TXT contains four fields used for validating the identity of the user: 
namely login-id, email-id, pagename and the ENCRYPTED ADMIN PASSWORD.  note that the script uses
crypt to encode the password entered during board creation and stores only the encrypted value.  
the original plaintext password is not stored anywhere.  validation is performed by encrypting 
the password entered during editing and matching the encrypted value to the stored password.

because of this, you might have to do some manual directory cleanup and purging to replace
message boards which cannot be administered because of lost passwords.

NOTE: the message board scripts used in EZMBGEN originated as the freeware version of the
Message Board V4.0 from CGI-Factory.  i've modified mbview and mbmsg extensively so they 
work with EZMBGEN but they retain the code, design and behavior of the original Message Board
script from CGI-Factory.  Please respect the copyright.

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manny@jps.net
http://www.inet-images.com/manny
11/5/2000