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INTRODUCTION
Publishing the BBS Component to a Windows NT server does not require Perl5 to be installed on the server. When you set the Publish To property to Windows, NetObjects Fusion uploads binary (executable) versions of the CGI files to the server. These CGI files can be executed directly by the web server. If you have Perl5 installed with the CGI extension associated with Perl, then you need to set Publish To to Unix. This does not mean you will publish to a UNIX server; it means that CGI script files (as opposed to binary files) will be published.
Many Windows NT web servers are already configured with Perl5; hence, the BBS component's Publish To setting must be set to Unix for such a server.
If 'cgi' as an extension has not been associated with Perl, then you can still set Publish To to Windows. All your other (non-BBS) CGI scripts then should use an extension of PL or PL5. By not associating 'cgi' with Perl, the web server will attempt to execute the cgi files directly. Hence, these cgi files should be NT binary executables.
The rest of this section concerns getting the BBS component to work on NT 4.0 servers running Internet Information Server (IIS) 3.0 and Perl5 where the file extension 'cgi' has been associated with Perl.
IIS PECULIARITY
Most web servers automatically detect the file type before trying to execute a CGI script. In other words, the server will examine a CGI file and determine whether it is a Perl script or a binary executable. If it's a script, the system should call Perl to execute the script; if it's a binary, the server should simply execute it. IIS, however, doesn't do this. It depends on associations to determine how to handle files. If 'cgi' has been associated with Perl, then the server is going to call Perl to execute the script/program regardless of whether it's a script (text) or binary file.
Obviously then, we cannot publish binary CGI files to an NT server if Perl is installed and the cgi association has been established. In terms of configuring the BBS component, this means that in this server environment, we can't set the Publish To property to Windows even though we want to publish to Windows NT. We have to set Publish To to Unix to force the Perl versions of the BBS CGI files to be published.
PERL PATH FOR UNIX PROPERTYPerl Path for UNIX
Now there's one other component property that needs to be set in NetObjects Fusion, that is, Perl Path for Unix. When Publish To is set to Windows, this setting is ignored.
PUBLISH SETTINGS
In the Configure Publish/Remote dialog, leave the CGI Directory setting blank. The BBS component ignores this setting. CGI files are automatically placed in the .\bbs\cgi-bin directory.
SERVER-SIDE CONFIGURATION
After publishing your site, you may need to set the .\bbs\cgi-bin directory to executable. You do this on the server in the following way:
- Run the Internet Information Server Manager program.
- Select your WWW service, then select Service Properties from the Properties menu.
- In the dialog that appears, click on the Directories tab, then click the Add button.
- Click the Browse button in the Directory Properties dialog.
- Navigate to and select the .\bbs\cgi-bin directory where the BBS CGI files were published to. These files are bbs-submit.cgi and submit-bbs-form.cgi. Click on Okay.
- You will need to fill in the Virtual Directory field. Just to give you an idea of what to enter for this field, here are sample settings:
Directory setting: c:\InetPub\wwwroot\myname\bbs1\bbs\cgi- bin
Virtual directory setting: /myname/bbs1/bbs/cgi-bin
- In the Access panel of the Directory Properties dialog, make sure Read and Execute are checked. This is very important. The cgi-bin directory must be set to executable.
- Click OK to close the Directory Properties dialog.
- Click OK to close the WWW Service Properties dialog.
- You will need to stop and restart the WWW service for your new settings to take affect.
View your Web site and click on the BBS icon in your browser.
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