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Simple Affiliate Program CGI >

Your Simple Affiliate Program  consists of:

1. Two CGI scripts. These scripts must be edited to work with your web host.  Instructions are below.  The two scripts are:

- s.cgi
- simplemail.cgi

s.cgi - Is the script that actually carries the ID throughout your web pages.

simplemail.cgi - Is the script that assigns ID#s and sends out e-mail confirmations.

2. Three HTML web pages.  These pages may be edited to reflect your product or service.

- affiliate.html - This page is where people will join your affiliate program from.

- thankyou.html - This page congratulates your new affiliate and gives them their new affiliate details. These details are also e-mailed to the new affiliate and you the webmaster.

- order.html - This page is an example of an order page for your product.  You can customize this ordering page to work with your
current ordering system or simply ignore this page and use your current order page. If you use your own order page you will have
to create a field for the affiliate ID# as shown on this order.html example.

3. Three text files:

- counter.dat - this counter file is the numbers that your new affiliates will be assigned. It is suggested that you don't tamper with this file.

- user.txt - this is the e-mail message your new affiliate will receive after they have joined your affiliate program.  You should edit this file to reflect your affiliate program.

webmaster.txt - this is the e-mail message you will receive after someone has joined your affiliate program.  You should edit this file to reflect your affiliate program.

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HOW DOES IT WORK & CGI SCRIPT INSTRUCTIONS
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Both CGI scripts will need some minor editing to work with your UNIX web host.  Below are detailed instructions of how to edit each script.

If you are not familiar with CGI scripts and don't know your web host's variables please contact your web host and ask for the following 3 things:

1. You must know if you can use CGI scripts outside of your CGI-BIN.  Most web hosts do have this feature and it will make setting up your Simple Affiliate easier.

2. The path to Perl on your server.  This will look like:

#!usr/bin/perl

3. The absolute path to your UNIX Sendmail program. This will look like:

/usr/sbin/sendmail

That's it!  You are now ready to edit your scripts.  Below are the instructions to edit each script:

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Setting up outside your CGI-BIN (suggested if possible)
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If you can use CGI scripts outside of your CGI-BIN and most web hosts do have this feature and it will make setting up your Simple Affiliate easier.

The Simple Affiliate files must be uploaded into 3 different areas:

CGI-BIN (4 files):

counter.dat
simplemail.cgi
user.txt
webmaster.txt
thankyou.html

ROOT DIRECTORY -This is your main directory usually where your index.html file can be found. (4 files):

s.cgi
affiliate.html
order.html

NOTE: If you cannot have CGI files outside of your CGI-BIN you will have to place the s.cgi file in your CGI-BIN.  Details on this are below.

TEMP DIRECTORY -You must create a directory called "temp".

The "temp" directory is where you put all of the web pages you want the Simple Affiliate to work with.

Example:  If your website consists of 4 web pages, let's call them index.html, testimonials.html, reports.html, & order.html.  You would
then add these pages to your temp directory along with the files affiliate.html & thankyou.html that we supplied you.

SPECIAL LINKING INSTRUCTIONS: 

You MUST edit your HTML links to work with the Simple Affiliate.  Normally you link to an HTML page by it's file name.

Example:   The following is how a normal link to a page called order.html would look like:

<a href="order.html">

Using the Simple Affiliate you must change the link to:

<a href="s.cgi?order-[PERSONALID]">

HERE IS WHY (simple explanation of how Simple Affiliate works):

- As explained above your web pages will be kept in your "temp" directory.
- As explained above the s.cgi script carries the ID#.

For this all to work together you must refer to the s.cgi script in the affiliate's web address.  For example let's say I joined an
affiliate program at http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com. The main page is index.html and my affiliate ID# is 9999.  My affiliate web
address would then be:

http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com/s.cgi?index-9999

This how and why the above URL works.  Basically you are telling the browser to lookup the s.cgi file at tp://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com.  
The s.cgi file then looks in the temp folder you created for the index.html.
The s.cgi script also carries whatever is after the "-" through the web pages. In the above example "9999" would be carried.

Using the example further up with the web pages them index.html, testimonials.html, reports.html, & order.html that are in the temp
folder.  The URLs for these web pages would be:

http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com/s.cgi?index-9999
http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com/s.cgi?testimonials-9999
http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com/s.cgi?reports-9999
http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com/s.cgi?order-9999

If I was adding links to my HTML to link to any of the above web pages they would look like:

<a href="s.cgi?index-[PERSONALID]">
<a href="s.cgi?testimonials-[PERSONALID]">
<a href="s.cgi?reports-[PERSONALID]">
<a href="s.cgi?order-[PERSONALID]">

The above links are filled in automatically 'on-the-fly' by the s.cgi
script.  Where ever you have [PERSONALID]  in the HTML the s.cgi script
will fill in the ID# that was after the "-" in the URL.

EXAMPLE:  

- Let's use the domain http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com
- Let's use the web page "index.html"
- Let's use the ID# 9999
- Let's say your "index.html" page has two links on it such as:

<a href="s.cgi?order-[PERSONALID]">
<a href="s.cgi?reports-[PERSONALID]">

Using all the info in this example my URL would be:

http://www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com/s.cgi?index-9999

The s.cgi script would then automatically 'on-the-fly' fill in your links to look like:

<a href="s.cgi?order-9999">
<a href="s.cgi?reports-9999">
 
The 9999 would then get carried to the next page, and so on until it reached your order page where it would be placed in your affiliate ID
field.

BACK TO THE INSTALLATION:

You must edit the following 5 files:

affiliate.html
thankyou.html
s.cgi
simplemail.cgi
user.txt
webmaster.txt

HERE'S HOW:

affiliate.html - in the HTML you must edit 2 parts:

1. Make sure the path to your simplemail.cgi is correct. This line looks like:

<form METHOD="POST" ACTION="/cgi-bin/simplemail.cgi">

2. Add your e-mail address to the following line:

<input type="hidden" name="mailto" value="sales@yourdomain.com">

thankyou.html - Using web design software or any text editor you must change anywhere it says "yourdomain" to your domain.  It also displays HTML code for a banner.  If you have a banner you must change the following line to fit your banner URL and size:

<img src="http://yourdomain.com/banner.gif" border=3
 height=60 width=468></a>

s.cgi - You must edit the following line which is the full path to the temp directory you created. If the below example does not work you must contact your web host and ask what your full path is:

$template_directory = "/home/www/yourdomainwithout.com/temp"; #

EXAMPLE:  If my domain was www.ClassifiedAdSecrets.com I would edit the above line to look like:

$template_directory = "/home/www/classifiedadsecrets/temp"; #

simplemail.cgi - You must edit the following 3 lines that are found close to the top of the script:

### Location of sendmail on your server.
$mailprog = "/usr/sbin/sendmail";

### Put your domain here without the "www."
@referers = ('yourdomain.com');

### Add your email address below leaving the "\"
$youremail = "sales\@yourdomain.com";

user.txt - Simply edit this to reflect your website and product or service.

webmaster.txt - Simply edit this to reflect your website and product or service.

ALL FILES MUST BE CHMOD CORRECTLY WHEN UPLOADED

The proper CHMOD permissions for the following files are:

.cgi-     755
.html - 777  (usually not needed)
.dat -   666
.txt -    777  (usually not needed)

Don't have an FTP program to upload and change file permissions with?

You can download a full version of CuteFTP from our website in the FTP Programs Section.

To change file permissions using CuteFTP you simply:

- start CuteFTP ans sign into your web host account
- highlight file you want to change file permission. Example: s.cgi
- right click and choose "change file attributes"
- put the correct CHMOD permission as shown above in the box provided and click OK. Example.  for s.cgi you would change to 755

Do the above for each file that needs it.  Thats it!

QUICK RECAP OF INSTALLATION:

1. Edit all files that need changing (HTML, CGI, and .TXT files).
2. Create directory called "temp".  Put all your HTML files in here.
3. Put the following files in your CGI-BIN:

- counter.dat
- simplemail.cgi
- user.txt
- webmaster.txt

4. Put the s.cgi file & affiliate.html in your Root directory.

5. CHMOD files to proper file permissions.

That's it! Your Simple Affiliate program is ready! 

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Using your CGI-BIN
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If you can NOT place CGI scripts outside your CGI-bin you will follow all the steps above with the exception that you will have to place the s.cgi script in your CGI-BIN.

This will also affect your URLs and links.

Example:  If you were working with the web page index.html and the ID# 9999 your web address would then be:

http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/s.cgi?index-9999

LINK CHANGES

Your links in your HTML will also have to reflect this difference. 

Example:   The following is how a normal link to a page called order.html
would look like:

<a href="order.html">

Using the Simple Affiliate in your CGI-BIN you must change the link to:

<a href="cgi-bin/s.cgi?order-[PERSONALID]">

That's it!  Your Simple Affiliate program is ready!