Common


	Common Error Messages - these are error messages common to all servers. For server specific error messages, go to that page. (Windows, Unix, Mac server pages)


	Internal Server Error

	File Not Found


		Document Contains No Data

	CGI script appears in right frame after clicking New Message

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

This is the most common error that people receive. It is a general error that your system administrator may customize. The causes of this error are:

Publishing the BBS locally and uploading the generated files to the server.
The Message Board component was designed to be published remotely. If you are locally publishing your web site, you will encounter quite a bit of difficulty getting the Message Board up and running.

Another option:
What you may want to consider is creating a one page web site to contain the Message Board component. Publish this page to your server to a distinct location. Then link this page to the rest of your site with an external link. The site will still look connected and you avoid the numerous problems that can ensue. Here is a list of some of the problems that you will run into if you publish the Message Board component locally and then upload the site via third party ftp:

The scripts are more likely to get corrupted
The config file which is essential to the Message Board may or may not be published. If it is published, not all of the correct pathnames may be written to the file.
The necessary directories may not be created on the server. You will have to log into the webserver, determine which directories are missing, recreate them and assign the correct permissions.

CGI scripts must be run from a specific directory on your server
Depending on how your webserver was configured, there may be a required directory that cgi scripts have to run from. If this is the case, then you will need to set the CGI-bin directory to point to this required directory. Fusion 3.0 will allow you to customize the location of the CGI-bin directory but there are two restrictions:

The directory must be in the publish root directory or lower.
What this means is that if you are publishing to htdocs/ on your webserver, the cgi-bin directory must reside in or below the htdocs/ directory. You cannot set the CGI-bin directory to be ../cgi-bin.
The directory must be a relative path.
You cannot specify the CGI-bin directory to be something like C:/Programs/Scripts/cgi-bin. It must be a relative path pointing to the cgi-bin directory from the current page. (ie bbs/cgi-bin)

File Not Found
The requested URL /submit-bbs-form.cgi was not found on this server.

This error indicates at least one of the following:

The URL of the page you are viewing is incomplete
This is the most frequent reason why this error will occur. The Message Board component expects you to be using the fully qualified domain name for your webserver. For example, you will get an error if are viewing your site using mysite.com instead of www.mysite.com.

If you are viewing the page in Netscape, the actual source code for these two pages will differ. If you are using the mysite.com address, the source code for the New Message button will look like

<A href="/submit-bbs-form.cgi" TARGET="message">.

If you use the fully qualified doman name address, www.mysite.com, the source code for the New Message button will be appear complete:

Notice that the www.mysite.com references the correct location of the submit-bbs-form.cgi script.

If you are viewing the page in Internet Explorer, it is harded to detect that the URL address used is incomplete. The source code for mysite.com and www.mysite.com will be exactly the same, even though you will receive two different results. In Internet Explorer, the source code for the New Message button will look like:

The CGI scripts were not uploaded to the server
Check the Web server to make sure that the scripts were properly uploaded to the server. If the connection timed out or another error occurred, the scripts may not have been uploaded correctly.
If you are publishing to a UNIX server and have telnet access, there is a way to test the scripts to see if they are working properly.

Document Contains No Data
This error will usually occur when:

One of the support files has been modified (such as the bbs-control.html, CGI files, etc.)
The site was published locally and then moved to the server later. Or if the site was publish directly to a mapped drive which is a network connection to the server.

The latter of these events is the most likely cause of the problem. Look at the source code of your bbs-control.html file and check what the link to the submit-bbs-form.cgi file is.
With this error, the link will usually appear as:

This link is supposed to be generated by JavaScript, which calls your base
URL and appends to that the path to the CGI file. So, the link should be generated as something like this:

If this is the case, it is recommend that you re-publish the site remotely to the server.

It has been reported that there is a problem on some ISPs that (even though the write permissions have been set on the /bbs/message directory) necessary files are not created in the /bbs/message directory the first time a new message is created. So, after re-publishing the site using remote publishing, try the following to create these files manually:

In the /bbs/message directory, make a copy of the bbs-data.original file - name the copy "bbs-data.html"
Make a copy of zero.counter - name the copy simply "counter"

Make sure that the permissions are correct on the cgi-bin directory and files.

CGI script appears in right frame after clicking New Message

Your server is not set up to execute the CGI script correctly. In order for the server to execute a CGI script, it has to be told to do so in its configuration files. If it's not, the only thing it knows to do is to display the file instead.

The problem might also be the Perl setup. If the server doesn't know where to find the Perl interpreter, this might happen as well. Your perl path needs to be pointing to the Perl5 executable.

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