UNIX World Wide Web Tools

If you're just getting started with publishing on the World Wide Web and need basic how-tos and specific instructions on how to do it here at UIC, then you need: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/webpub/contents.html

But if you're an old hand, read on; we've got new ways to spice up your Web publishing. If the Web tools below sound interesting, check out the details at: http://www.uic.edu/depts/accc/webpub/advanced_tools.html

• Do-It-Yourself Hot Maps
• Do-it-yourself Web Forms
• Keeping Track of Your Web Pages

Include your mapped image in your Web page with an <img> tag as usual, but because it's also a link, surround the <img> tag with anchor tags (<a> and </a>). For the anchor's href, use the URL for imagemap (on www.uic.edu if your image map is on tigger, and on www2.uic.edu if it's on icarus), ending with the pathname of the map file as it would be written in a URL.

For example, suppose that your account is on tigger and your netid is adabyron, so that the URL for your public_html directory on www.uic.edu would be ~adabyron. To use the image mymap.gif and the map file mymap.map (both in your public_html directory) in your personal home page, you'd use: <a href="http://www.uic.edu/htbin/imagemap/~adabyron/mymap.map"><img ismap alt="hotmap" src="http://www.uic.edu/~adabyron/mymap.gif"></a>

(If your account and the image map are on icarus, just change the www.uic.edu in the above to www2.uic.edu)

To use FormMail, create the HTML form in the normal way, but specify the URL of the FormMail script as the <form> tag's "action" attribute: <form method="post" action="http://www.uic.edu/htbin/FormMail/...">
(More about the ... in a bit.) You also need to include a couple of hidden tags, including one to give the form a FormMail name: <input type="hidden" name="fm_name" value="your_form's_name">

And finally, you authorize the entire process by creating a special auxiliary file named .formcap, which includes a line with your form's name. For forms in your personal WWW home page, the .formcap file should be in your public_html directory. The "..." in the <form> action above is the pathname part of the URL for the .formcap file. (So for adabyron's personal home page, with the .formcap file in her ~adabyron/public_html directory, the "..." would be ~adabyron/.formcap).

Use the FormMail script on the same machine as your .formcap file; since the above uses FormMail on tigger (www.uic.edu), your .formcap file must also be on tigger. If your .formcap file is on icarus, then use the FormMail CGI script on icarus; just change the www.uic.edu in the <form> tag above to www2.uic.edu.

When FormMail receives a filled-out form, it reads and formats the input, and sends the results in a email note to the owner of the specified .formcap file. You can use FormMail to process multiple forms (assign a FormMail name to each form, and put each name in a separate line in your .formcap file). You can use procmail (see the September/October 1995 issue of The ADN Connection) to forward one form's results to one person, and another's to someone else. In this way, a departmental Webmaster can publish forms on behalf of different offices within the department without having to personally handle every filled-out form.

The best way to do this is to analyze the Web server's log files, and webstat can do just that. All you have to do to turn webstat on for the files in your public_html directory is to create a configuration file named .webstat in that directory. (It can even be a zero length file if you want to use webstat's defaults.) Then once a night webstat (the program) will find your .webstat configuration file, look through the HTTP server's log file to find all instances of your files being served on that day, and put its report in your directory (or update the already existing webstat report). In addition to telling you which files have been requested, webstat will tell you the countries your browsers come from. You might discover a fan club you never knew existed!

Comments are appreciated; send them to
Bob Goldstein, bobg@uic.edu