T A B L E
O F
C O N T E N T S

Information Responder 

M A N U A L




Installation

To install and use Information Responder, your domain server must be Unix or Linux, have sendmail or qmail available, and have Perl version 5+ installed.

Use an FTP program to install Information Responder. CuteFTP or WS_FTP for Windows, and Transmit or Fetch for Mac, are among the many FTP programs that allow you to CHMOD (change directory and file permissions). FTP programs are listed at http://tucows.com/

This is a list of the files you should have received when you downloaded Information Responder.

LicenseAgreement.html - (license agreement)

InformationResponder.cgi - (program file -- the form handler)

InformationResponderCP.cgi - (program file -- the control panel)

InformationResponderGlobal.pm - (program file -- module used by the other two program files)

InformationResponderManual.html - (owner's manual)

To install Information Responder, upload the three program files (using your FTP program) into a directory that is allowed to run Perl CGI programs. (Usually a cgi-bin)

You may wish to make a subdirectory in your cgi-bin within which to install Information Responder.

Give the three program files 755 permissions (see A Note About Setting Permissions).

Once installed,

  1. Use the control panel (see The Control Panel) to
    • create one or more information relay records and
    • generate a form.
  2. Put the generated form into a web page.
  3. Test the form on the web page.

Note:
When you first use the control panel, Information Responder will attempt to create a subdirectory to hold request relay, password, and other data. The subdirectory's name is IRdata

If you installed Information Responder into a directory named IR, then this is how the directory structure might look:

cgi-bin |
          | IR |
              | IRdata

If Information Responder can not create the IRdata subdirectory, it will need to be created manually with your FTP program and give it 755 permissions. If 755 doesn't allow files to be created on your server, then try 766, then 777. (see A Note About Setting Permissions).




A Note About Setting Permissions

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Permissions can be set via telnet or with some FTP programs.

Some servers require permission 766 or 777 for directories that will write files or for the files themselves. If a script creates its own directories and files, don't change the permissions unless you know what you're doing. (In other words, if it works like it should then don't fix it.)

Here are the permission numbers translated into defining attributes:

755    Global read/execute permission
(For scripts, directories and data files. If your server won't write to directories and files with 755, use 766):
 
Owner —  read-write-execute
Group —  read-execute
World —  read-execute
 
766    Global read/write permission
(If your server won't write to directories and data files with 755 or 766, use 777):
 
Owner —  read-write-execute
Group —  read-write
World —  read-write
 
777    Global read/write/execute permission
(For directories and data files, try 755 first, then 766, and 777 last):
 
Owner —  read-write-execute
Group —  read-write-execute
World —  read-write-execute

Some FTP programs use the term "Other" or "Global" instead of the term "World" as used above.




The Control Panel

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#1

To access the Webmaster's control panel, type the URL of InformationResponderCP.cgi into your browser.

If you installed InformationResponder.cgi into a directory named IR, then the URL might be something like this:

http://example.com/cgi-bin/IR/InformationResponderCP.cgi

The first time you access your control panel, you will be asked to provide a password. What you type here will be your password for future access to the control panel.

Once access is granted, the fact is stored in a cookie on your browser until either one of these happens:

  • You click the "Log Off" link on the control panel.
  • You close your browser.

When either of the above happens, the cookie is removed from your browser. (Cookies must be turned on to use the control panel.)

#2

Click the "Configuration" link on the control panel and specify the location of sendmail on your server.

#3

Enter information about each information item you want available for Information Responder delivery.

These items can then be selected to incorporate into a form with checkboxes (or radio buttons) where site visitors can select the information they want and have it delivered to them.

Each information item is an info record in the database, a record that tells Information Responder what to do when someone checks the box for the information.

To add an info record, click the "Add Info Record" link on the control panel. A similar link is available to edit or delete an info record.

#3a

For each record added, indicate whether the item is
A. External Info Source or
B. Internal Info Source

A. External Info Source: an autoresponder service's "add" email address, for example, or other the email address for other autoresponder software, or a list server's "subscribe" email address.

B. Internal Info Source: Information Responder itself will be sending information directly to the form user.

Continue filling in the record information following the instructions in the Control Panel and click the "Update this Info Record" button.

#3b

Edit/Delete records from the "Edit/Delete Info Records" button in the same manner as your created them.

#4

When you have one or more info records in your database, you can generate forms for your web pages. Click the "Generate a Form" link.

The top part of the page lists each info record in your database.

  • The info records might or might not have a heading and description associated with them. If they don't, you can provide it. The information will be remembered for next time.

  • Decide which info records you want for the form you are generating. Enter a number for those records in the order you want them listed on the form. (The ones without numbers won't be included in the form.)

The next part of the form generation page is where you design the form.

Again, what you type here will be remembered for next time, which lets you tweak the forms without having to enter the information all over again.

When you click the button at the bottom of the page, the next page will have a representation of the form you just created and the source code you can copy and paste into your web page.

Test the form on your web page before going live.




Changing the Generated Form

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You can change the generated HTML form as you wish,
so long as these items are not changed:

  • The <form... tag.
  • Any <input type="hidden" ... tags.
  • The word input within any tag.
  • The word select within any tag.
  • Any of these attributes:
    • type="checkbox"
    • type="radio"
    • name="______"
    • id="______"
    • value="______"
  • The </form> tag.

Other than that, you may do as you please — change fonts, colors, table widths and backgrounds, email and name form field sizes, and so forth. Just be sure to test the form after changing it, before going live with it.

If you want to remove the form submit button and replace it with an image to click for form submission, you may do so. This is the only exception where an entire tag may be removed and replaced. Example of replacement:

<input type="image"
	src="myimage.gif"
	height="38"
	width="123">



Technical Support

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Technical support is available in the support forum. See http://www.willmaster.com/support/ for details.




Thank you for your purchase of Information Responder.




Copyright 2002-2008 Bontrager Connection, LLC