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Site-Info

Site-Info: Homepage

Welcome to Site-Info, a package of perl-scripts for creating and maintaining an Index of WWW-Servers written by Thomas Ganslandt 11/94.

Features

Site-Info can automatically sift through your html-files and arrange the data in Indiceses sorted hierarchically by directory, alphabetically or by date of last modification. An author-database combined with a forms-mail interface enables users and administrators to easily get in touch with the people who contribute to your server. By including special information tags in the header of html-documents you can insure that your address keeps attached to your document even on different servers that use Site-Info. The Index can be searched by keywords, location or author.
Site-Info also provides means for transmitting index data between different servers, thus making possible a common Index for multiple servers within an institution or a domain.

Requirements

Obtaining the package

You can get the package at http://medsun06.uni-muenster.de/people/ganslan/site-info/site-info.tar.gz.

Installation

Site-Info comes with an installation script that will prompt you to enter the locations of your server directories, subsequently installing the scripts with the appropriate configuration values. The script will also create the index and author databases.

Documentation

A manual describing the installation and usage of Site-Info is being written. You can access it here.

Security

To maintain the security of your databases, Site-Info itself protects certain scripts with passwords. Still, you should restrict access to part of the package by enabling document protection within your server setup. Still, if you discover security loopholes within the package, please send an email to ganslan@uni-muenster.de.

Bugs and Limitations

This is an alpha-release - the software has so far only been tested on a setup of two servers (Sun SparcClassic and SparcStation 20 running CERN-httpd). There might still be bugs within the package, but they shouldn't concern any data outside of the index databases. If you encounter any problems please mail me.
Transmission of Index data between servers is only half-automatic at the moment, the scripts have to started by hand. I'm still looking for perl-code that would allow me to directly send a FORM-request to a different server (if you have suggestions, feel free to send me an email).

Copying

The Site-Info package is covered by the GNU General Public License (Version 2). You can freely distribute it change it or incorporate it into your own software as long as you stick to the terms of the GPL (you can read it here).
If you find this package useful, or have suggestions as how to increase its functionality, I'd be happy to receive email from you (to ganslan@uni-muenster.de).

Acknowledgements

This package was originally inspired by the mkindex.pl program by Brigitte Jellinek (bjelli@cosy.sbg.ac.at) which creates an alphabetical index of a server. The program didn't follow symlinks, which prompted me to write an augmented version; a hierarchical index followed, and resulted in the current Site-Info package which doesn't have much in common with the original program anymore.
For the forms-mail interface I took code for parsing url-encoded data and talking to the sendmail program out of the form-mail package by Reuven M. Lerner (reuven@the-tech.mit.edu) copyright by The Tech.
I marked all references to foreign code in the Site-Info packge with their origins in these two programs.

Disclaimer

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Site-Info V1.2a, updated Thu, 08.12.94, 18:27 MET.