New feedback form?

[icarus]

Thanks to dragon_light, I may just have a new system for feedback.

One where the reviews won't disappear. (Always a big plus.)

The old one had the drawback in that I never knew when I received a review (in addition to disappearing reviews), and it was hard to reply to them.

So I tried using a php form, but my server didn't support php.

Then I tried FormMail, which had a simple Perl script (don't I sound like I know what I'm talking about? Ha.) Well, the script had to be uploaded to my cgi-bin... and once again, my server told me nonono, bad-bad, you can't do that. *whacks Icarus with a newspaper*

Now I'm trying www.bravenet.com. It's free, and they host the script. There's a bandwidth limit on how much can be sent through it, but I figured out that one review is anywhere from 500 - 1,000 bytes.

At 10,000,000 bytes per month, hell, that's 10,000 - 20,000 reviews? *howls with laughter at my initial worries* Okay, okay, so I'm never going to go over my bandwidth.

I've decided to leave the form open on each story, rather than having a link to it, because then I can fill in the subject line.

Here's the test case. (Obscure story selected deliberately.) What'cha'think?

Kudos to dragon_light, who has a cure for the common one-track-mind. ;)

Comments

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

whats your server (the co.)that you have a cgi-bin but its tellign you you can't upload to it? Or are you getting an error message and if so what is it?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

It's Earthlink.

It tells me that I'm not the owner and remote users don't have permission to upload any documents to the bin. It won't let me chmod, or set the permissions to 777.

I'm curious, what are you thinking?

Icarus

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

darn, i forgot you had EL, I do as well, but i dont even see the cgibin come up when i log in. i can however chmod if i use soemthing like cuteftp instead of the ftp prrogram in the 'toolbox' of the EL menu bar. i dont think you coudl get it to work there anyway though, i tried just puttign up soem .shtml pages and those wouldn't work! >=( what's the point of free webspace if you can't really *use* it. All i use mine for is photo hostign for ebay stuff since my intertexius domain is coded for parental filtering software. (You probably don't BTW have to set your program (if you used another sit) to 777, thats a little too broad of a permission, 755 is more common, public read/execute but not write which is more vulnerable.)

Is there any chance, a generic sendmail script (or any other free scripts for the using) in the EL cgi-bin?

it looks fine on the sory page- at least there is no ads added *there*. I don't like the ads after clickign 'send' but its free what can you do :S'

Oh when I get back tot eh home page- I see this:

Left Menu -- middle_framed_text ---------------------Right menu waaaaaay over here.

My screen is bigger than yours I guess; i have to shrink my window to make it look balanced. You can fix that up by making a 3 column table and set the widths on the columns so the right and left are equal. Right align the left menu and left align the right one. center align the middle one (though you shouldn't have to if its width is the same as the pretty graphical-frame you have anyway. Then center the whole table. It'll be all lined up and centered with no extra space.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the way my site's set up (by someone more skilled than me) you have to select the smaller or larger screen size. But in the return link I could only specify one or the other, um, so I picked the smaller. I haven't time to change it right now, but I'm going to keep your notes on how to do this pinned, because some people are confused by the "choose your screen size" thing.

Icarus

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

if my notes didn't make a great deal of sense whne you get around to actually doing it, let me know and I'll help.

[wanderingscribe.livejournal.com]

I think that's pretty nifty. If I had a website (no, my old dead site doesn't count.) I'd probably do the same thing for it.

Now I need to get to work and read more fics. I've been so lazy lately. ^^;

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and change all my comments to this system. But after the prompting from Alchemia above, I've talked to Earthlink about that permissions situation. They couldn't solve it over webchat, but they've referred it up the chain of command.

Icarus

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

if you find out we DO get cgibin with the free webhosting, please LMK, I tried installing a test script, set the chmod and when I tried to run it from the web, it only permitted me to download it :(

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'll let you know how the Earthlink situation works out.

Their tech support used to be kick-ass, but it's now run out of India, and to be frank, they're just not as good as the support used to be when it was in the US. The Indian techs are not as experienced and tend to have to look up a lot of answers the US techs used to know off-hand. Also, I get the impression that the US techies were "into it" while the Indian techies have just made a career move, you know? They just seemed more interested.

The language is sometimes a barrier, they new tech support doesn't always understand the problems (today I had to repeat it four or five times), but more to the point, the fluency level isn't enough to be able to effectively draw out clarifications and ask good questions.

Eventually, when I've replaced my website I'm going to get rid of Earthlink. I used to be with them because of the tech support. Now all that's keeping me there is my website.

Icarus

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

India? Isn't the international call more expensive? Boggles.

I've never called EL's TS. I signed onto EL just to get away from Compuserve when AOL bought it and the quality there went down on CServe. Also, I never have trouble signing on and staying connected for hours on end which was a problem w. compuserve. I'd try a smaller indep co, but I don't enough about what's out there and I'm worried about getting poorer quality in connecting again.

[alchemia.livejournal.com]

So far this is all I've found: http://www.earthlink.net/biz/hosting/faq/#hostingfnb_runcgiscripts

Does EarthLink offer any ready-to-run CGI scripts?
Yes. We provide you with three ready-to-run CGI scripts that you can add yourself. We also provide tools to help you build a hit counter, message board, and guest book for your site.

At the very least there should be some kind of guestbook or sendmail program I would think. Heck if I can find it.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I talked to them today, and they couldn't solve the problem, but I didn't get a flat "well sorry, you're not allowed" kind of answer. Instead they referred up the chain of command and told me to try to upload the script in 72 hours.

I'm not holding my breath, but I have my fingers crossed.

Icarus