Overview
This program is the property of Virtual Marketing Technologies. You may use this program for non-commercial use at no charge, however technical support is not available unless the program is purchased. You may not re-distribute, edit, or modify this program in any way without the express written permission of Virtual Marketing Technologies. If you intend to use this program for commercial purposes, you must purchase a user license. Failure to do so is a direct violation of US and International copyright laws and subject to fines and/or prison terms. Welcome to WebNews v2.0, an easy-to-use news system that will allow you to post news for your users. WebNews v2.0 is completely re-written from top to bottom to make the system easier to use. The most obvious changes are the way the system displays available stories to users and the way administration deletes news. Now, instead of choosing news from a selection box, users can view a brief synopsis of all the news available along with the headlines. If a user wishes to view more about the story, all he/she has to do is click on the headline to view the complete text of that article. Plus, it is easier to delete stories now, as well. You no longer need to know the filename of the story you wish to delete. Just select the story from a pop-up menu and hit the delete button. It's that simple. And WebNews v2.0 is now fully contained in one program instead of two. And almost all html files are included directly in the script. To set up WebNews v2.0, please read these directions carefully. They should allow you to set up the system in just a few minutes with no difficulty at all. |
Installation
The entire system comes in one tar file. It is highly recommended that you first un-tar this program on your UNIX server and download all files to your machine if you wish to edit them on your PC or Mac. PC's will truncate the filenames to eight characters and three letters in the extension which can make setting this system up even more difficult. Place the file "news.cgi" in your cgi-bin directory. Once in the cgi-bin directory, type "chmod 755 news.cgi" so that your server knows that this can be executed by your users on the web. Be sure that you upload the file in UNIX or "text only" format or you may have problems trying to run the program. You'll probably need to do some editing to it first. There are a few variables you will want to edit in the program. $Password - This is the password that must be entered in order to add a news story or delete a news story. $BaseDir - This should point to the directory where you are going to store your WebNews v2.0 files and news stories. All of your news stories will be kept in this directory. This should be the server path to this directory. Check with your server administrator if you need help figuring out what this path is. $BaseURL - This points to the same directory but is the URL. It is the address you must type to get to this directory if using a web browser. Check with your server administrator if you need help figuring out what the URL to this directory is. $CGI_URL - This is the full URL to your webnews script. $DataFile - $AllowHTML - If you would like to have the ability to use HTML commands in your news stories, set this to "1". If you do not want the ability to use HTML commands, set this to "0". If set to "0" (the default setting), WebNews v2.0 will simply filter out any HTML commands found in the news story. $Header - This is the header information you would like shown at the top of every news page and screen shown to the user. It can include graphics, text, links, etc. You simply use standard HTML commands in between the two "EOT" commands. $Footer - This is the footer information you would like shown at the bottom of every news page and screen shown to the user. It can include graphics, text, links, etc. You simply use standard HTML commands in between the two "EOT" commands. These are the only variables you need to change. You may not change anything below these variables. Changing anything else in the program is an infringement of copyright laws and your license agreement. Make sure you place all other files, other than your "news.cgi" script, in the directory you identified in the $BaseDir variable. You'll need to "chmod 777" this directory and all files in it because the server will be writing to this directory. |
Adding News
The first thing you will need to do after installing WebNews v2.0 is add some news stories. This is very easy to do in version 2.0. First, just call the script with the following command: http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi?action=add where "yourdomain.com" is your own server. The "?action=add" must be at the end of the line because this tells the program that you want to add a story. The system will then ask you for your password, the filename of the story (the name you want to save it as), the headline of the story, the lead paragraph, and the body of the text. The filename can be any valid Unix filename. Just don't add ".html" at the end of it. The system will handle extensions for you. The headline is what will be shown to the user and should describe what the story is about. The lead paragraph is usually the first paragraph of a news story and usually includes the "who, what, where, when, why, and how" of the story. The body of the story is the rest of the story. The lead paragraph will be shown with the headline to all users to look at all the story synopsis when first starting the program. This will determine to them if they want to read the whole story. It will also be displayed with the full story as the first paragraph of the news story. When done, just hit the submit button and, if everything was filled out correctly, it should add it to the system. Continue adding stories until you have added all the stories you need to. |
Reading News
Reading news is simple with WebNews v2.0. Simply point to "http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi" and the system will display all the news stories available to read. Remember that "yourdomain.com" is the name of your server. This should be the same as what you placed in the variable "$CGI_URL" including the name of the script. Nothing is needed after "news.cgi". It will automatically load up the datafile and display each article's headline and lead paragraph. To read a particular news story, simply click on its headline and the full text article will be displayed. It's that simple! |
Deleting News
"http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/news.cgi?action=delete" and the system will display a pop-up menu of all stories available, listed by their headline. Simply enter your password and choose which story you wish to delete from the pop-up menu and hit the delete button. The system will then delete your news story and no longer display it among the available news stories to users. Be sure that you really want to delete the story before hitting the delete button because you will not be able to get it back once you hit the button. There will be no confirmation screen. |
Technical support is only available to those who purchased a license for this program. You must have your registration number available before contacting Virtual Marketing Technologies. The most recommended way of obtaining technical support is via e-mail. You can e-mail Virtual Marketing Technologies at vmt@airmail.net If you wish to purchase this program and receive a license, which entitles you to run this software on a commercial web server, send a check or money order to Virtual Marketing Technologies, 1510 North Hampton Road, Suite 270, DeSoto, TX 75115. Funds must be in US dollars only. |