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Email List Manager - Setup

• Retrieve the compressed archive, elist.zip or elist.tar.
• If you will be running this script on a UNIX web server (the best available choice), choose elist.tar. It has the necessary protections already set on most of the files.
• Untar (tar xf elist.tar) the archive into a directory. You'll notice that it creates a directory named "elist." This directory doesn't need to be a part of the path that is normally served to users. In fact, it shouldn't be part of it.
• Within that directory (cd elist), do ls -l to see all the files. Here's a brief description of each:
• badaddr.html - Displayed when an email address does not contain the mandatory @
• badpass.html - Shown if an invalid administrator password is entered
• byebye.html - When a user asks to be deleted from the list, this message is displayed
• cgi-lib.pl - A handy interface for doing CGI in Perl. You'll need to move this and elist.pl into the cgi-bin directory for your web server.
• default.html - If you run /cgi-bin/elist.pl with no email address, this file is shown
• elist.pl - The main perl script. You'll need to move this and cgi-lib.pl into the cgi-bin directory for your web server.
• emaillist.txt - the list of email addresses, one per line with a tab-a or tab-d to indicate if the address is active (a) or "deleted" (d). This file must be writable by your httpd process . Doing chmod a+w emaillist.txt will basically guarantee that it will work, but then anybody can change it. Contact your site administrator (aka webmaster) for more information about your web server's specific setup.
• error.html - If a critical error occurs - like file not found - this will be displayed
• notfound.html - Shown if a user tries to delete his or her email address, but it has already been deleted.
• onlist.html - Shown if a user enters an email address that is already on the list.
• sendmail.html - Displayed when the administrator wants to send an email to everyone on the list
• thanks.html - Displayed after a user is added to the list.
• Feel free to edit the .html files
• Within some of the files, you'll see things like $email, $MYCGI, etc. These words that start with $ substituted by the elist.pl. The  words and their substituted values are as follows (they're not case sensitive):
• $email - the current user's email address ("joe%blow"@doe.com)
• $urlemail - user's url encoded email address, for use in MAILTO: urls (%22joe%25blow%22@doe.com)
• $mycgi - the name and path to the elist.pl (/cgi-bin/elist.pl)
• $back - uses the value of HTTP_REFERER, returned by the client's web browser, which is usually with the referring (previous) URL
• All the .html files that elist.pl are parsed for the above strings. None of the .html files are directly accessed by the user's web browser.
• And take a look at elist.pl, as you'll need to make some changes there, too:
• $HOME="/home/dzs/elist" - this should be changed to the directory where the above files are located. Type "pwd" and you'll see the current directory.
• $PASSWORD="goober" - change the goober part to any obscure word. To be safe, just use letters and numbers, symbols like $ or @ may cause problems. This password is required whenever authentication is required to view or edit the list or send mail.
• $SENDMAIL="/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t -v" - this command /usr/sbin/sendmail is used to actually send the email messages. You'll probably need to change the path to wherever sendmail is located on your machine. Type which sendmail to find it.
• Now, make sure that you've moved the .pl files (elist.pl and cgi-lib.pl) into your web server's cgi-bin directory.
• Make sure elist.pl is executable (chmod a+x elist.pl)
• Contact your webmaster to find out where it is. It might be /usr/local/etc/httpd/cgi-bin on Apache-based servers.
• If you're lucky, try typing the following into your nearest web browser
• http://yourserver/cgi-bin/elist.pl
• You should see something like this:


• From this screen, you can enter a new email address or, if you didn't change the password, view and edit the current list.

Author: Doug Steinwand
Date: [09/16/97]

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