How to use the generic guestbook

Your guestbook URL will be http://cgi.idirect.com/guest/your_login_id.html
Use of the guestbook is an extended servide of the Do-It-Yourself Web! server and is included with use of the Generic Forms Processor and outgoing email. To use extended Do-It-Yourself Web! features, you must preregister any email addresses that you wish to have outgoing mail sent to. Contact our Sales Department for more information.

We have set up a sample guestbook that shows the use of these settings in a live environment. You can see the page as it would appear to your users, or you can view the source of the page to see how it's done. Please note: You MUST call your form page "addguests.html", failure to do so will result in incorrect links back to your site.

Instructions

Required Statements

Your form must include the following statement:

<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://cgi.idirect.com/cgi-bin/guestbook">

The two absolutely required fields are the owner field and the recipient field. They MUST come after the FORM statement above and should look like this (replace the VALUE in the first line with your Do-It-Yourself Web! log in id and replace the VALUE in the second line with your email address)

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="owner" VALUE="your_login_id">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="recipient" VALUE="youremail@yourprovider.com">

Remember that UNIX is case sensitive...both the above statements contain strings that MUST be in the case displayed above. Be sure to close off your form with the </FORM> tag when you have finished listing all your fields

Optional Fields

your_name

The your_name field will allow the script to report back the name that people enter into this field on both the HTML guestbook page and in the optional email notifications (described below).

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="your_name">

email

This form field will allow the user to specify their return e-mail address. If you want to be able to return e-mail to your user, you will require this field. This will be put into the From: field of the message you receive if you have configured the script to notify you via email when someone adds to your guestbook. This field will also be entered into the To: field of the message that is sent to the user if you have configured the script to send a "thank-you" email.

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="email">

url

The url form field allows users to enter a URL to their own homepage. If it is present and filled out by the user their name in the guestbook will be a hot link to their homepage

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="url">

city

If the city form field is present and filled out by the user their city will be listed in the guestbook on the last line of their entry.

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="city">

province

If the province form field is present and filled out by the user their province will be listed in the guestbook on the last line of their entry.

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="province">

country

If the country form field is present and filled out by the user their country will be listed in the guestbook on the last line of their entry.

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="country">

comments

If the comments form field is present and filled out by the user their comments will be listed in the guestbook in the first lines of their entry.

Method

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="comments">

notify_me

If the notify_me form field is present and the VALUE is set to "yes" then you will be sent an email notification each time that someone adds to your guestbook. If the value is set to anyhing other than yes, or if the field is not present in your form the script will default to "no" and you will not receive an email every time that someone adds to your guestbook.

Method

To receive an email notification of new additions:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="notify_me" VALUE="yes">

To turn off notification use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="notify_me" VALUE="no">

link_email

If link email is present and set to "yes" and the user has filled out the email field, then the user's email address will appear in your guestbook with a mailto: tag to the users email address. If this field is omitted or set to anything other than "yes", the script will default to not linking the user's email address to a mailto: tag.

Method

To link the user's email address to a mailto: tag:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="link_email" VALUE="yes">

To not link to email use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="link_email" VALUE="no">

email_thanks

If the email_thanks form field is present and the VALUE is set to "yes" then the user will be sent an email "thank you note" each time that someone adds to your guestbook. If the value is set to anyhing other than yes, or if the field is not present in your form the script will default to "no" and the user will not receive an email when they add to your guestbook.

Method

To email a thank your note to the user:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email_thanks" VALUE="yes">

To turn off "thank you" email use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email_thanks" VALUE="no">

order

If order is present and set to "bottom" then new additions will be added to the bottom of your guestbook. If order is set to anything other than bottom the script will default to placing the newest additions at the top of the list

Method

To make newest entries added last:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="order" VALUE="bottom">

To make newest entries added first use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="order" VALUE="top">

required

To force users to fill in certain fields, place all field names that you want to be mandatory into this field. If the required fields are not filled in, the user will be notified of what they need to fill in, and a link back to the form they just submitted will be provided.

Method

If you want to require that they fill in the email and phone fields in your form, use a syntax like:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="required" VALUE="email,your_name,comments">

company

This form field allows you to specify how the title and header that will appear on the guestbook pages. If it is ommitted the script will default to "My" and the resulting pages will be listed as "My Guestbook". If a value is set in this field the resulting pages will be "value Guestbook"

Method

If you wanted a title of 'Big Corp's Guestbook':
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="company" VALUE="Big Corp's">

separator

If the separator form field is present and the VALUE is set to "yes" the script will add a <HR> tag between each entry in your guestbook, unless the separator_style tag is set to change the configuration of the <HR> tag. If this field is set to anything other than "yes" or omitted altogether the script will default to placing a <P> tag between each entry.

Method

To change the separator from a <P> to a <HR>:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="separator" VALUE="yes">

To use a <P> tag as the separator use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="separator" VALUE="no">

separator_style

If the separator form field is present and the VALUE is set to "yes" and this field is present, you can specify the appearance of the <HR> tag. Any valid <HR> extenstion is acceptable, including NOSHADE, WIDTH and SIZE.

Method

To change the separator from a <HR> to a <HR WIDTH=75% SIZE=4>:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="separator_style" VALUE="HR WIDTH=75% SIZE=4">

To use a <HR> tag as the separator use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="separator_style" VALUE="HR">

allow_html

If the allow_html form field is present and the VALUE is set to "yes" the user will be able to enter HTML tags into the guestbook. For instance they count place a line like <H1>NICE PAGE</H1> in the comments field and it will display in the guestbook as a size 1 heading. If this field is set to anything other than "yes" the script will default to stripping all HTML tags from the input. (This can make for a messy page).

Method

To allow HTML tags in the guestbook:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="allow_html" VALUE="yes">

To disallow HTML tags use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="allow_html" VALUE="no">

format

If the format form field is present and the VALUE is set to "yes" then the input in the comments filed will have a <BR> tag added at the end of each line. If the format field is set to anything other than "yes" or omitted altogether, then the script will default to fitting the text into the viewer's browser window in as few lines as possible.

Method

To add <BR> tags after each line in the comments field:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="format" VALUE="yes">

To leave the comments untouched use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="email_thanks" VALUE="no">

response_page

If you wish to redirect the user to a different URL, rather than having them see the default response to the fill-out form, use this hidden variable. The valid settings for this variable are "guestbook" or "http://page_you_wish_to_send_them_to", any value that does not start with either http:// or guestbook will default to displaying the entry back to the user on a page that offers a link back to the guestbook to see the complete list. The guestbook will have a link back to your homepage. Setting this to a different URL allows you to create a custom "Thank You" screen.

Method

To send the user directly to the guestbook after they fill out the form:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="response_page" VALUE="guestbook">

To send the user directly to a page you specify after they fill out the form:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="response_page" VALUE="http://someplace.com/page.html">

To display the default thank you page use this line or omit this field altogether:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="response_page" VALUE="default">

Changing the appearance of the default confirmation page page and the error pages

The following fields can be used to change the <BODY> tag of the default confirmation screen

background
bgcolor
text_color
link_color
vlink_color
alink_color

These fields will change the default values of the <BODY> tag from the default of <body bgcolor="#0b014b" background="http://www.idirect.com/graphics/bgcolor.jpg" text="#eeeeee" link="#00ff00" vlink="#ffff00" alink="#ff0000"> to whatever you specify.

Method

To use a file called image.gif in your root directory as the background:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="background" VALUE="http://web.idirect.com/~yourname/image.gif">

For a background colour of white:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="bgcolor" VALUE="#FFFFFF">

For a text colour of black:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="text_color" VALUE="#000000">

For a link colour of red:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="link_color" VALUE="#FF0000">

For a visited link colour of blue:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="vlink_color" VALUE="#0000FF>

For a active visited link colour of yellow:
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="alink_color" VALUE="#FFFF00>