JimWorld Gazette Issue #62 08/21/1998

Gazette - Issue #62 - August 21, 1998

I delayed this issue until today in order to get your next Freeware Plus program running. You will be getting your next free program next week.

For those of you that remember when we passed the 1,000 subscriber mark you'll be interested to know that next week we will pass the 60,000 subscriber mark.

Cool.

CONTENTS

• A Gazeteer Community Goes Hi-Tech
  
• Freeware Plus - Week II
  
• Goings On
  
• Tips From The Hitman - Part XXXVII
  
• A Call For Change - Part II
  
• Get Linked
  
• Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g62

SCUMBAGS AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

While going through my Flashstats log reports (review next week) I found that the Submitter was getting several accesses each day from a page in the U.K. so I went to see what kind person was sending JimWorld some traffic.

When I got there I became slightly disoriented as I was right back at the sumbitter data entry page on my own site. Some kind of circuit looping problem? A DNS glitch?

No. A Scumbag.

Seems that the operator of the site at <http://www.cjmcneill.com/submitter.htm> felt that it was important to have a free submission service for his visitors, so he just stole mine. Graphics, page code and all. Of course, he didn't have the skill to write a script to do the actual submissions, he overcame his stupidity by just linking to mine under his name. From a page that is on his server but has all of my page layout, graphics and copy just the way he stole them from JimWorld.

I wrote this 'person' a note asking him to explain and got back a terse two word suggestion that I perform a physical feat that I can't do.

According to Internic, this particular Scumbag is registered as follows:

Registrant:
Web Hosting, Advertising & Merchant Services (CJMCNEILL2-DOM)
114 Lunderston Dr.
Glasgow, Scotland G53 6BS UK

Domain Name: CJMCNEILL.COM

Administrative Contact:
McNeill, Colin J (CJM64) mailto:cmcneill@GLOBALNET.CO.UK
+44 7050 5650073

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
Hostmaster (HO376-ORG) mailto:reg@WWWNEXUS.COM

Billing Contact:
McNeill, Colin J (CJM64) cmcneill@GLOBALNET.CO.UK
+44 7050 5650073

Colin, welcome to the world of grownup people. This is your 15 minutes. Enjoy it. It is doubtful that it will come again in your lifetime. I took your 2 word response to heart, but decided that instead of doing it to myself, it would be more rewarding to do it to you.

UPDATE - Just as the Gazette was ready to mail I received word from Mr. Colin's hosting provider that his site had been removed from their server.

The point of this entire story is to let you know that there are ways to handle these types of situations that can yield results. I stress the word 'can' since it doesn't always work. It depends entirely on the number of brain cells residing at the ISP. Some are intelligent and responsive, while others are less evolved than the unsavory types they host sites for.

When you run into a difficult situation like this, take a few breaths and try the direct approach. If it works, it is much easier on your nerves.

To the many ISP's on this mailing list, please consider how you handle these types of situations. It is within your power to actually handle situations properly. Investigate the facts and arrive at a reasonable resolution to the situation. But it is important to consider the type of person responsible for handling problems in your organization. Is yours an enlightened and capable employee with the task of finding correct answers or just an office drone responsible for keeping these issues from reaching your desk and upsetting your day?

Ask yourself if the person on your staff tasked to this department is the type of person you would want to deal with if you had a problem that needed resolution. My experience says that there is a 90% chance that you can't honestly answer 'Yes' to that question.

Please note that I am suggesting that these issues be investigated. The problem is not always with the owner of the web site. At least as often it is a problem with what I call 'Jerk Attack' by someone just trying to cause problems or carrying a big chip on their shoulder. In this case, throw your full support behind your customer and help them get the jerk off of their back.

FREEWARE PLUS - WEEK II

Quick! Name the last 10 banner ads you saw while surfing the Net. The last 5? The most recent? Most Internet users have learned to "tune-out" or ignore banner ads while trying to find specific information on the Internet. And, with bulk, unsolicited Email being out of the question for any legitimate business, what is the next step?

The Freeware+ products are great Internet related utility programs that can be given away for free from a company's web site or to their existing customers. Each award winning product can been modified to display a company's graphic right on the main program screen. That graphic is hyperlinked directly to a URL of the company's choice.

Since all Freeware+ products are extremely useful tools, they will be used often and visitors to a company's site will thank them for such a great free gift every time they see the company logo appear on the program's main screen, and will be only a click away from the corresponding web site!

Banner rotations versions of all Freeware+ products are also available that actually rotate dynamically controlled graphics (up to 500x140 pixels) through the main program screen.

Each Freeware+ product is available in both an Internet Explorer 4.0 enhanced version and a browser independent version. The IE 4.0 enhanced version performs all display functions within an embedded browser window while the browser independent version utilizes the user's default browser.

Last issue we discussed and gave you a chance to download the Freeware+ version of Visibility Analyzer. The response was dramatic and very few people had any problems with the program, even though it was still sortaBetaware. The only trick I learned to tell you about is that you must be online to the Net when you launch the program the first time and enter the code of 5020 to activate the program.

This week you have a chance to get another free program - Word Market - no restrictions or nags or anything - that snoops on several of the search engines to build a database of frequently requested search words and phrases. This is so handy that I have been leaving it running on my desktop machine for several days on end and have discovered several new search words that I had never even considered. I put up a couple of doorway pages for those phrases and they are generating traffic already. Cool stuff. Sure beats guessing.

Last issue's Visibility Analyzer was enabled to show you a constant graphic to remind you to visit JimWorld. This week's program is enabled to display banners in rotation. The banner rotation version would allow you to either promote your own sites or to sell banner impressions to your advertising customers. All with the added advantage of being able to offer high-quality software to your site's community members at no-charge.

While the software that I am offering Gazeteers is targeted at webmasters, that is just a sample of the different types of programs you can acquire for your own community. If Software Solutions doesn't have something appropriate for your community, they will find one for you.

I have set up a download page on JimWorld to let you get the latest version of each program in this series. I will post updates and upgrades on this page, so drop by once in a while and stay current.

The download page is at http://www.jimworld.com/freeware/

SPECIAL DEALS FOR GAZETEERS

iServer
http://iserver.com

Ordering a Virtual Server

Check out everything iServer has to offer at http://www.iserver.com, However, when you're ready to order, make sure you come back to the Gazette and click on this link <http://order.securesites.com/order/index.html> to get some very special treatment as a Gazeteer. Start with a 30% discount on all of your hosting and options. Plus the special for $25 set-up fees is still in effect. That's a big savings. Check out the other specials they have going on for members, and you can get any of those also. iServer is where our communities reside. Very happily, I might add.

GOINGS ON

Forums:

The activity levels continue to grow in both the Search Engine Forums <http://searchengineforums.com/> and the Get High (Traffic) Forums <http://gethighforums.com/> The amount of knowledge available in both forums is truly staggering. Unless your site is already getting too much traffic and you can't keep up with all of the sales your site is generating, you owe it to yourself to spend a few hours in the forums. You'll discover ideas that will have immediate impact on your web activities.

To those of you that had to suffer through the attack this past week by the person that was unhappy about having their blatant ads deleted from the Forums and decided to try spamming the Forums to a standstill and then mounted a personal attack on one of our volunteer moderators, you'll be happy to know that her dial-up access, and her father's too, have been canceled by her Dad's ISP. Probably some interesting conversations going on at that household this week, don't you think?

TIPS FROM THE HITMAN - PART XXXVII

It all started with those AOL disks in the mail. I did my best to ignore them, but they just kept coming. I felt guilty throwing them away, I would keep them and write over them. But they would not let up, the just kept coming. New, improved, better. I broke down, I loaded the darn thing and signed on. I was intrigued, I wanted to see this new thing called the Internet but in 1995 AOL made it so very difficult. Load this, download that, and their connection was at 2600 bps. It was unbearable. I never did see the Internet. But I had the bug. A local TV station started giving away discs to connect to the Internet, I grabbed one and that was it, I was on and there was no turning back, I was hooked and 9600 bps was such an improvement, it only took 2 minutes instead of 5 for pages to load.

Sound familiar? A lot of us got our first exposure to the Internet via those AOL discs in the mail. I hear it is easy now, but they lost me in 95 and I have never been back. I thank them anyway for changing my life. I was finally on the net.

So many of us got started this way, first as voyeurs just peeking at the world of the net through our browser keyholes, then as full citizens when we found out how to create our first web page. My first page started with an idea and a site I found online that would make a web page for me if I just filled in some blanks. It was great, I had a web page and had started my on-line business. But wait, as I looked around more and more, I noticed my page lacked something. First of all it looked like a word doc on colored paper more or less. I needed cool graphics to make my page, well, less boring. On checking my on-line budget, (zero) I found that I was going to have to fend for myself. I had heard of PhotoShop, but when I looked it up in a catalog my jaw dropped. (It is $499 now, don’t remember what it was then) This solution was and is still out of reach to the average, new, eager up-and-coming web page designer.

What to do? Enter Paint Shop Pro. I found PSP at a list of helpful tools at my ISP help page as I recall. I had no idea if it was any good, but I soon discovered they had just what I needed most. They were one of the pioneers of the 'download and try for free'. As a matter of fact, that fist version of PSP did not shut down after 30 days. It only had a little message that I had exceeded my 30-day trial when that point in time arrived, then kept adding days to my overdue notice to buy. Yes, I admit that I went well over my 30 days on that version 2.0 of the PSP program. But, I did buy it and have paid for every upgrade since. I will now review version 5.0, the latest and by far the best version yet. I now also own PhotoShop but I find I use PSP as my primary graphics tool for a lot of reasons.

PSP has always been the closest affordable software to approach the usefulness of PhotoShop. Now, the newest version comes closer than ever to this high level of functionality. PSP has always been one of a handful of graphics programs designed to use PhotoShop plug-ins, which make doing cool things with graphics so much easier. And the price has always been under $100 (5.0 is $59-$69 in most catalogs)

PSP has always had most of the commonly used features one would use in PhotoShop, plus it did things like drop shadows easier that in PhotoShop. Of course it was lacking in some areas but I have always been able to do great web graphics with a little work and the help of plenty of on-line tutorials. One feature that has been in PSP as long as I have used it that is not on PS is a screen capture. This allows you to cut and paste anything that appears on your computer in another window as an image which can be edited and saved to your favorite format. It supports TWAIN so you can scan in images too!

The real versatility of PS over PSP in my opinion was layers. The ability to save an image as a series of layers built one on the other to create a final image. These files could be saved in the PS as .psd file extension and you could open them later and change just a portion of the image on one of the individual layers.

PSP used to only have one layer to work on, and only one undo while you were working. As a result, if you changed you mind, or had saved a finished image you had to use tools to edit the image such as cutting out part and pasting in the changes. Not anymore.

Version 5.0 of PSP adds a couple of key features that blurs the line between these two products as far as I am concerned. PSP now supports layers, has a .psp extension that can be used to save the layered image that works like the PS .psd file and you can import and work on PS .psd files as well. Add to this unlimited undo (well not unlimited, just limited by available hard drive space) and you now have one of the best graphics programs at any price. Add to all of this a nozzle feature as found in Painter that will let you spray paint with images instead of colors and the upgrades in 5.0 are very impressive.

I do have some complaints on the upgrade. There were attempts to more closely copy the PS palettes structure. Pop up palettes for various features such as layers, brush tip size etc. The problem is that the pallets are poorly designed in my opinion. For instance the brightness/contrast control is 300x340 pixels and can’t be resized, only minimized off the work area. Even on a 17" monitor the pallets are too big. In the past, these pallets would open horizontally in the unused space on the right side of the button bar at the top of the screen and did not get in the way.

Small complaints aside, you cannot go wrong with Paint Shop Pro if you need a versatile graphics program to create your web graphics and do not have five hundred bucks to spare. Version 5.0 even includes an excellent image animation utility as a separate program free with the new version.

One last thing. Graphics programs are not intuitive in use. If you are new to them, and try your hand working with a free trial download available at http://www.jasc.com you will want to follow the links on the site to the tutorials and examples. This is the quickest way to learn how to use a program with a very large number of features.

Hayden Mitchell
The Web Hitman
http://www.webthemes.com

A CALL FOR CHANGE - PART II

....Keeping Your Code Working.

The concepts we'll go over this week will help to ensure that your users (or successors) will not have reason to get into your code. This is incredibly important. Why risk someone screwing up months of work because they don't like the colors you picked for the HTML output of your CGI program. We will give you the keys to locking up your code to the point where no one needs to get into it.

Here's the top portion of wwwboard.pl (a Matt Wright Script, considered the "standard" Web Forum system ...)

  --- BEGIN ---

  $basedir = "/path/to/wwwboard";

  $baseurl = "http://your.host.xxx/wwwboard";

  $cgi_url = "http://your.host.xx/cgi-bin/wwwboard.pl";



  $mesgdir = "messages";

  $datafile = "data.txt";

  $mesgfile = "wwwboard.html";

  $faqfile = "faq.html";

  --- END ---

A LARGE percentage of CGI authors follow this same format, with a little group of variables at the top of a CGI program that you are forced to edit by hand before you upload the program to your server. This is bad for 2 reasons.

1. The author has put his program at risk, by depending on a novice to enter in valid values.
   
   
2. The author is depending on someone else to make his/her program work properly.

We can eliminate all editing of the source code by using a few of the built-in features that Perl and your Web Server offer to you.... Environment Variables and system variables. Lets take them one at a time:

$basedir = "/path/to/wwwboard";

What WWWBoard is looking for here is the physical operating system path to where the program is installed, for the purposes of saving data in the correct location. Rather than having you enter this information into his source code, that line could be changed as follows:

   $me = "/wwwboard.pl";

   $basedir = $0;

   $basedir =~ s/$me//g;

Here, we've used one of Perl's built-in "special" variables $0 which returns the full operating system path of the currently running program. By using a simple pattern match, we've removed the name of the program and the preceding slash (/test.cgi) from it, leaving us with the exact value WWWBoard needs.

baseurl = "http://your.host.xxx/wwwboard";


What WWWBoard wants here is the full URL to the program directory. WWWBoard uses this value to pre-pend URLs. For example, WWWBoard creates lots of ... tags using this variable: $title

This bit of code would create the following HTML in the WWWBoard output: WWWBoard

This works for the program, but it is incorrect in terms of good html coding practice. You should never use full URLs in your code, as it is more work for your browser to process, use relative urls (a href="/wwwboard/wwwboard.html"> WWWBoard) wherever possible. That being said, you can get the current relative URL from your web server by reading in the contents of one of the GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES that are available to your program. Perl sees these variables as values in the %ENV array and you can read them into your program like this:

      $variable = $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'};

... which would give you a value like /cgi-bin/myprogram.cgi

This fits perfectly into a tag, and also follows the "Use relative URLs" rule perfectly.

The problem here, though, is that WWWBoard wants just the path, and not the name of the program. Using the same pattern match we did in #1, we can get that done easily (remember, we already defined $me to the name of the program):

      $baseurl = $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'};

      $baseurl =~ s/$me//g;

$cgi_url = "http://your.host.xx/cgi-bin/wwwboard.pl";

Can you figure this one out for yourself? We've already done the work in the last example.....

   $cgi_url = $ENV{'SCRIPT_NAME'};

That's it.



The next variables WWWBoard wants are "preference" variables. These are values that you can't get from anything built into Perl or the Web Server.And must be hand-entered... or do they?

      $mesgdir = "messages";

      $datafile = "data.txt";

      $mesgfile = "wwwboard.html";

      $faqfile = "faq.html";

Next week, we'll explore a way that you can make your CGI program use preference variables, without having your users have to change them within the program.


IN A NUTSHELL.

We've started to eliminate the need for CGI's to require end-user modifications, using server ENV Variables, and Perl's own built-in variables. Next week, we'll get deeper into the "NO MORE CODE EDITING" solutions, making your CGIs more dummy proof, and harder working.

----------

John Cokos (mailto: jcokos@ccs.net)
The Interactive Web (http://www.interactive-web.net)
Web Programming Supersite (http://www.web-programming.com)
... See the HTML Version of this article series here, with examples.

GET LINKED

PartyFinder.net
http://partyfinder.net/

PartyFinder is preparing to launch a new directory of web sites that would be of interest to people planning parties and events of all kinds. Birthday parties, anniversaries, retirement, Christmas parties, company picnic, Little League team parties.... the list is pretty long.

The directory is not open to the public yet, but they have extended the opportunity to Gazette subscribers to visit now and submit their sites before they open it up to lesser beings than Gazeteers.

They plan a lot of promotion for this directory, so try to get accepted if your site has anything to offer a party planner. Event sites, travel, lodging, gifts... the list is pretty long so odds are you can find a category to fit your site into.

Construct your description, title and keywords carefully to get the most out of your free listing.

The directory is being driven by Hyperseek, the same engine driving the Helpware Directory (is your site listed?) so it has plenty of power and features.

Did you know that there is a free version of Hyperseek available. If you don't need subcategories, it installs in minutes and has a full administration system.

I'll review it for you next week.

----------

QuestFinder Search Engine
http://www.questfinder.com/

Add your Url with over 60,000 other web sites to date. Receiving thousands of submission each day. Free tools and resources. Accepting all web site categories.

----------

AttorneyFind
http://www.attorneyfind.com

The most visible Internet directory of lawyers. Over 10,000 viewers visit AttorneyFind each week. The AttorneyFind 'banner' appears on over 10 major search engines such as AltaVista, AOL's NetFind, and HotBot.

The AttorneyFind site has gone through many changes in the past year, including an entirely new layout, a Lawyer to Lawyer section where attorneys can enter their biographies - for free, a secure online sign up page, and many new categories for visitors to search.

A basic listing in the directory is just $36 per year with several upgrades (like an audio file) for slightly higher prices.

SNIPPETS

Y2K and your PC (mini tip from the Hitman)
http://www.rightime.com/

Everyone has heard about the year 2000 computer problem. How seriously it is taken varies from person to person, but I know that those who are actually working to protect their businesses from this problem are taking it very seriously. After reading that 80% of PC's have a BIOS chip on the motherboard that will not turn over at the stroke of midnight on 2000, I decided to find out if this was just hype or maybe an inflated estimate to sell software. I found a good test program that is free at <http://www.rightime.com/> Read the text file after downloading and before you run it.

I have three computers, a 486 bought in 1994, it failed and needs a mother board with new bios to fix it, a 166 pentium bought in 1996, it failed but can be fixed with a software patch, and a new 200mmx notebook. This one bought in June is the only one that will roll over without any changes. How about your computer?

--- Hayden, thanks for a great tip. My machine passed!