A 'simple' guestbook - help!

Junior WebHelper Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

Hi

I'm a complete novice at this stuff. I've picked up the Guestbook 1.5 from proxy.de and thought I had configured it all nicely...but whenever I click submit on the addentry form I get "internal server error".

I know it must be something to do with the guestbook.pl script but I simply can't work out what.

This is the 4th script I have tried from different sources and all of them seem to be stuck on the same point - so I'm obviously missing something completely. I only want to run a simple message board but I don't want to have to do a redirect to a hosted one full of adverts and which looks completely different to the rest of my site.

Short of posting the whole script, I'd be enormously grateful if you any thoughts about what it is I'm likely to be doing wrong.

Cheers,

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

- Are all the Perl scripts CHMODed to 755?
- Did you upload them in ASCII mode (setting in your FTP client)? Some clients set this automatically, but some may not.

Junior WebHelper Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

Hi Daniel - thanks for replying!

I did upload the cgi-bin folder in ASCII and CHMODed it to

User: Read Write Execute
Group: Read Execute
Other: Read Execute (though I keep finding it changes to Write Execute)

My FTP is WFTP LE - doesn't let me do CHMOD 755 number things, but I gathered from the FAQ on my server (123-reg.co.uk) that checking the read / write / execute boxes does the same thing...unless I've misunderstood?

The server says I don't actually need a specific cgi-bin folder as it's fully enabled, but as the script included one I thought I may as well stick with the way it's written: saves me from more tinkering with things I don't really understand!

Any other ideas?

Junior WebHelper Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

I've sorted out a bit of the problem - apparently I needed to CHMOD the cgi-bin folder *and* the guestbook.pl itself. Think I've made sense of the 755 / 711 numbers lark now. (The penny is dropping - very slowly, but it's dropping!)

However this has given me a new problem:

- I can now add an entry to the guestbook, for which the screen thanks me and redirects me to the guestbook...except that my entry doesn't actually appear there. I can go into the admin page ...which shows all the guestbook entries in a nice list exactly as I want the guestbook to do (well, almost...it's in black text on a black background. I've spent an hour searching for a mistaken hex number in the .pl file but not found the glitch yet).

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

Have you CHMODed the file which contains the guestbook entries?

Junior WebHelper Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

Yes I've done that, cheers.

I'm beginning to suspect there's a missing chunk in the script. I'm going to try and copy some of the script for the admin page onto the guestbook page itself: presumably if it can read them out in the admin, it should be able to do so on the guestbook? That seems logical to me...I think. Confused

Junior WebHelper Joined: 24 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

Success - but chiefly because I happened to come across another bit of software at www.active-scripts.net which is rather excellent and does all the script-y stuff for you. I've managed to customize it a bit to get it looking closer to the style of the rest of my site - not perfect but much 100% better than any of my other attempts.

Thanks for your help, Daniel!

(PS Please drop by my site some time if you like...it's got free music and some other bits and pieces: www.learntoswimrecordings.co.uk.)