Embedded Components and Tools Blog Center » WordPress http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs The Home For Smart Reusable Code & Circuits Tue, 23 Mar 2010 21:40:32 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 The Marketing Bubble http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/10/the-marketing-bubble/ http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/10/the-marketing-bubble/#comments Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:56:27 +0000 Ron Fredericks http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/?p=191 The marketing bubble‘s effect on embedded device software developers

Introduction

Ron Fredericks writes: In yesterday’s marketing webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement by SocialRep‘s CEO, Chris Kenton, viewers were riveted by his inside knowledge on social media’s word-of-mouth marketing. Chris is well known for his combination of social media marketing knowledge as well as his ability to strip away the facts from the hype.

To set the stage, my own readers have found my marketing FAQ to be a very popular read for the embedded device software industry: Assessing marketing’s critical role in organizational performance. Read on to see if it will blend!

The Marking Bubble Defined

Chris introduced us to the “marketing bubble”, a marketing event in progress now. Chris may be the first to realize and share the underlying problem so clearly. Marketing has always been a word-of-mouth vehicle since the beginning of human conversations – we’re just not old enough to know it!

Check out the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association’s definition of word of mouth marketing. Chris made the case that professional marketers’ tools over the past 130 years have managed to bypass the value of word of mouth by blasting their messages into public and commercial communities to literally overpower the word-of-mouth model using Print, Radio, TV, Mass Markets, and the Internet. Yet the marketing bubble is now bursting as the Internet continues to host an exploding number of social media tools: – tools that extend word of mouth conversation through online social media platforms, popular content management sites, and even a new form of in-person meet up tool that can quickly assemble like-minded individuals into localized events.

Here is a short list of some of the more common word-of-mouth social media platforms that can be leveraged as microsites:

These platforms are also some of the leading causes for the marketing bubble. Check out http://www.alexa.com for further research into tools that specialize by industry and/or region.

These microsites often include application programmable interfaces (API’s), news feeds, user profiles, links to friends, groups, photos/videos, chat, and their own markup languages to build relationships and quickly share short conversations. These features are a little different than the more traditional social media platforms such as blogs, forums, wikis, chat, and idea managers.

Word-of-Mouth Customer Relationship Lifecycle

Chris presents an integrated marketing plan that starts with several forms of monitoring to measure influential conversations followed by use of a wide selection of social media tools.

Monitoring Social Networks: Metrics

Monitoring social media activity is one of the basic requirements to managing social media engagements. A company starting up with a social media marketing program nearly always intends to find and engage with their most influential online customers. But Chris goes on to point out that companies often fail in their use of social media marketing tools. The problem boils down to the fine art of adapting to the trends their team discovers after their initial engagements with social media. I call this the company’s analytics culture. There are thee areas that a company can monitor:

  • Media: The web pages and web sites that customers use or visit [commonly monitored]
  • Technology: The technology behind a company’s products [often ignored], and
  • Finance: The financial goals surrounding a company’s sales activity [often ignored].

The problem stems from a company’s tendency to focus too much on web page tools that monitor media, and in so doing, fails to develop an adaptable action plan that includes the other two key domains of marketing operations: technology and finance. After Chris pointed this out in his webinar, it seems very clear to me that a company needs more than trends in page clicks or page visitors to build the business case for change within a company’s executive team decision-makers. Two solutions that have become popular by social marketers in bridging the gap between initial engagement, and adapting their business activities towards the needs of the community, are in the reuse of these two popular tools already in use by most companies:

  • Integration of the company’s Goggle AdWords data, and the
  • Integration of the company’s CRM – SalesForce.com in particular.

Using Monitored Results: Analytics

Chris and others point out that although the use of CRM tools are well intentioned – a large percentage of marketers do not get the needed monitoring data to successfully adapt to changes or to meet the changing needs within the company’s community. Chris describes how a company can use their CRM as part of an integrated analytics strategy:

  • Use reports and analytics stored within the CRM
  • Integration of a word-of-mouth program integrated with the CRM
  • Creation of an advisory board from the most influential customers identified from CRM

Building a Program

Chris then presented a Word-of-Mouth program built around a Customer Relationship Lifecycle. He goes over some details, shows some steps to be taken, and highlights a case study. I summarize his program from a B2C perspective here:

  1. Awareness:
    • Value: Branding
    • Tools: Web ads, Search engine optimization or marketing, Viral video, Targeted community sponsorship
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content
  2. Knowledge:
    • Value: Branding and Marketing
    • Tools: Landing pages, Microsites, and Webinars
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community
  3. Consideration:
    • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
    • Tools: Reviews & comparisons, Hosted chat, and Webinars
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community
  4. Selection (or when a customer takes the desired action like buys the product):
    • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
    • Tools: Online discount offers, and Hosted chat
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
  5. Satisfaction:
    • Value: Branding, Marketing, and Sales
    • Tools: Surveys, Support forum, Support chat, and Customer communities
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
  6. Advocacy:
    • Value: Branding and Marketing
    • Tools: Referral offers, Peer forums, Product networks, and Consumer communities
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council
  7. Loyalty:
    • Value: Branding
    • Tools: Discounts, Insider forums, Product networks, and Customer communities
    • Marketing framework: Conversation + Content + Community + Customer advisory council

Some steps along the way in the execution of a word-of-mouth customer relationship lifecycle program:

  • Engage in useful conversations:
    • Targeted monitoring and metrics,
    • Managed engagement,
    • Trend tracking,
    • Media, pundit, and influencer profiling.
  • Create a cross-functional Social Media A-Team:
  • Marketing,
  • PR,
  • Product marketing,
  • Sales,
  • Customer service,
  • Engineering, and
  • Legal.
  • Assign a domain to each member:
    • Where are people talking about your domain,
    • What are people saying, topics, trends,
    • What opportunities are there to get involved,
    • What do we want to spend energy talking about.
  • Create a place were you can profile these domains, aggregate, and share information:
    • Meet weekly
  • Assign at least one “SocialRep” to manage the engagement process
  • Buy a solution only when the process is well defined and in place
  • Test and continually question monitoring metrics
  • Hire a Marketing Engineer, to address data integration

Some Final Thoughts For Embedded Device Software Developers

Most of what I summarize above is focused on B2C relationships and comes out of my review of Chris Kenton’s great webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement. Of course I added my own knowledge and some additional references to help my readers get a fast overview of the landscape.

Building a social media marketing program would have some differences when it comes to software developers focused on embedded devices including:

  • A smaller volume of activity
  • A scarcity of good marketers and public communicators with a working knowledge of the deeply technical subject matter and its assocated value chain
  • A larger barrier between the engineers who make and use software:
    • Those that build the software tools targeting a wide variety of programmers, engineers, and architects,
    • Those that create the run-time device optimized software platforms targeting embedded software engineers, and
    • Those that build the differentiating applications targeting the end user.
  • A different marketing framework focused on the collective business and not the individual:
  • Look for social media marketing tools that integrate with software developer frameworks, perhaps as plugins
    • Basic collaboration for developers looks like code check-in and check-out for global teams, not like a tweet.
    • Maybe the next tweet will be a twitter plugin that adds another Eclipse perspective, for example.

Yet there can be no doubt that the short word-of-mouth conversations on microsites will burst the marketing bubble. This would be true for any marketer planning there next engagement, for businesses focused on building software for embedded devices, or for the device manufacturer trying to leverage software developers. Chris Kenton’s marketing webinar: Beyond Monitoring: Managing Social Media Engagement is a good place to start building a word-of-mouth marketing plan. His offering demonstrates the most integrated set of tools I’ve seen – to build a substantial word-of-mouth marketing program.

Thanks to Chis for making it very clear that social media word-of-mouth marketing is not a program to be considered independently of other marketing activities. Instead it’s just a mater of time before the bubble bursts in your market sector. The real question is more of when, than if, a company should add word-of-mouth social media tools to their integrated marketing strategy.

 

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]]> http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/10/the-marketing-bubble/feed/ 16 WordPress Math Publisher Plugin Support http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/03/wpmathpubsupport/ http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/03/wpmathpubsupport/#comments Tue, 25 Mar 2008 05:57:25 +0000 Ron Fredericks http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/03/wpmathpubsupport/ Ron Fredericks writes: This is just a short post to point my readers to a new mathematics publishing plugin available from ECI’s Blog Center called WP Math Publisher. This plugin offers a simple alternative to the more standard (albeit more complex) approaches: XML’s MathML and Math into LaTeX.

Post your comments, support questions, and feedback to this post if you like. Post your own support suggestions to help others when you can.

WordPress Math Publisher plugin home page
www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/wordpress/wpmathpub/

Usage

An example of how it can be used in your blog posts:

Code (mathtext)
  1. [pmath size=16](a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2[/pmath]
  2.  
  3. where:
  4. [ pmath size=12]~a[/pmath] is defined as a
  5. [ pmath size=12]~b[/pmath] is defined as b
  6.  

Results in:

(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2

where:
~a is defined as a
~b is defined as b

References:
  Pascal Brachet’s phpmathpublisher
    Home: www.xm1math.net/phpmathpublisher/
    Usage: www.xm1math.net/phpmathpublisher/doc/help.html
  Matteo Bertini’s WordPress plugin called PHP Math Publisher
    www.slug.it/naufraghi/programmazione-web/wpmathpublisher
  Randy Morrow’s WordPress plugin called Axiom
    wordpress.org/extend/plugins/axiom/#post-2794

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]]> http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2008/03/wpmathpubsupport/feed/ 55 How to build Dean Lee’s Syntax Highlighter from latest components http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-build-dean-lees-syntax-highlighter-from-latest-components/ http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-build-dean-lees-syntax-highlighter-from-latest-components/#comments Tue, 29 May 2007 09:06:49 +0000 Ron Fredericks http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-build-dean-lees-syntax-highlighter-from-latest-components/ Ron Fredericks writes: In my last two posts:

During my research to solve the word wrap problem, I discovered a few more issues leading me to update Dean’s plugin with the latest version of GeSHI (an open-source project: Generic Syntax Highlighter for php. Highlight many languages, including PHP, CSS, HTML, SQL, Java, Assembler, and C for XHTML compliant output) and removal of unused files. I thought other WordPress bloggers might like to take advantage of the latest code too, so I document the steps needed to build a clean plugin with the latest components.

Flow Chart / Swim Lanes Widget
Below is a Flash widget I built to document the steps needed so you can roll your own up-to-date plugin. Follow these steps and you won’t have to be a programmer to get the benefits from the latest versions of these program components. The widget actively links to the latest PHP files and CSS classes:


Why Roll Your Own Plugin?
I have been working with components and tools on various projects long enough to realize a common problem. Whenever components are used from different projects, such as Dean’s plugin integrated with the GeSHi language components, each file and/or component continues to receive bug fixes and enhancements in real-time without regard to the other components and files. This is natural because each component’s project is managed by a different group.

So now I have an idea on how to fix this evolving problem of diverging code bases: create a flow-chart showing how to assemble the individual components into a final product. Use swim-lanes to highlight the different component resources being used. Document the whole work-flow into a Flash document so links to other web pages and/or live video’s can be included as hot-links to demonstrate the process.

Detailed Notes on the Problems Solved Here
Here are the issues I solve in this blog post:

  • The version of GeSHi included with Dean’s code-base is now obsolete. The latest version of GeSHi includes a few bug fixes and a few new supported languages for syntax highlighting. By the time you read this blog post, perhaps GeSHi will have yet an even more improved and stable code base.
  • One of the optional modules supplied by GeSHi, PHP samples found in the “contrib” directory; include a recently-identified security risk if included on a web server – such as your WordPress blog installation. Dean’s plugin includes this GeSHi directory by default.
  • Dean’s plugin also includes a Mac temporary file called .DS_Store that is not used by WordPress either.

The Components and Their Versions
Dean’s original code has the following versions:

My rebuilt version of Dean’s plugin has the following components and version detail:

A Final Note
The GeSHi code base continues to go through updates. At some point the logic behind my approach – mix and match the latest code from all resources required for Dean’s WordPress plugin – might break down. Perhaps GeSHi will adopt a new interface that’s not suitable to Dean’s WordPress plugin code, for example. In any case, if you are having trouble getting Dean’s plugin to work, I suggest the following:

Revert back to Dean’s complete code base. Install it as he suggests and try it. If Dean’s original code base does not work, then maybe you are not following the install instructions correctly or perhaps WordPress itself is at an incompatible version. If the plugin works, then try replacing code one step at a time. With each new file change, try your updated WordPress plugin to see if it still can be deactivated, reactivated, and highlights code correctly in a blog post. When the offending component has been identified, let me know so we can work out a new swim-lane diagram for others to follow.

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]]> http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-build-dean-lees-syntax-highlighter-from-latest-components/feed/ 10 How to Fix Dean Lee’s Source Code Highlight Plugin http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-fix-dean-lees-source-code-highlight-plugin/ http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-fix-dean-lees-source-code-highlight-plugin/#comments Sun, 27 May 2007 08:52:29 +0000 Ron Fredericks http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-fix-dean-lees-source-code-highlight-plugin/ Ron Fredericks writes: In my previous post, I discuss Dean Lee‘s source code syntax highlighting plugin for WordPress. It delivers all the great features of the GeSHi open-source highlight project for Wordress bloggers.

Yet some source code displayed badly – turning a developer’s nice clean style into a chaotic and messy format. I demonstrated the display problem using a perl sendmail script I plan to discuss in a future blog post. The problem had to do with some kind of whitespace word wrap issue.

I tested various features of CSS and DIV tag attributes created by Dean’s plugin and the GeSHi php code. I am happy to say, I found a simple one-line solution. My solution is in updating Dean’s CSS container class to force white space not to wrap.

Here is my solution:
Add this property to Dean’s “ch_code_container” CSS class:

white-space: nowrap;


Here is the complete update I made to my WordPress template:
wp-content/themes/eciWidget/style.css

Code (css)
  1.  
  2. /* Add the following CSS styles modified from Dean’s code Highlighter */
  3. /* Embedded Components, Inc. CSS classes update: version 1.0          */
  4. .ch_code_container {
  5. background-color: #f0f0f0;
  6. border: 1px solid #C3CED9;
  7. padding: 0px 0px 0 0;
  8. width: 100%;
  9. text-align: left;
  10. font-size:1.00em;
  11. overflow:auto;
  12. white-space: nowrap;
  13. }
  14. .ch_code_container .head
  15. {
  16. color: #808080;
  17. font-weight: bold;
  18. background-color: #f0f0ff;
  19. border-bottom: 1px solid #d0d0d0;
  20. padding: 2px;
  21. }
  22.  

So now let’s see how this change affects the source code highlight format using my sendmail perl script example. Compared to the image shown in my previous post, the updated highlight plugin CSS style change solved the problem. Now all lines of source code display as one line each, with the horizontal scroll bar used to see the full text:

Code (perl)
  1.  
  2. #!/usr/bin/perl
  3. ##############################################################################
  4. # FormMail                        Version 1.92                               #
  5. # Copyright 1995-2002 Matt Wright mattw@scriptarchive.com                    #
  6. # Created 06/09/95                Last Modified 04/21/02                     #
  7. # Matt’s  Script Archive, Inc.:    http://www.scriptarchive.com/             #
  8. #                                                                            #
  9. ##############################################################################
  10. # SPAM FIX                                                                   #
  11. # Embedded Components, Inc.:      http://www.embeddedcomponents.com          #
  12. # Ron Fredericks                  ronf@embeddedcomponents.com                #
  13. # Created 05/18/07                Last Modified 05/23/07                     #
  14. #                                                                            #
  15. # Logic: if number of Internet links exceed $spamChunksMax,                  #
  16. # then print a default error message instead of sending email.               #
  17. #                                                                            #
  18. # define number of links that can appear in an email                         #
  19. $spamChunksMax = 4;                                                          #
  20. # define web address to include in "too many links error message"            #
  21. $spamChunkErrorLink = "http://www.embeddedcomponents.com";                   #
  22. # define the spam error message                                              #
  23. $spamMessage = "Sorry, no spam today please…";                             #
  24. #                                                                            #
  25. # server-side spam test (search this phrase to find all script edits)        # 
  26. #                                                                            #
  27. ##############################################################################
  28. # COPYRIGHT NOTICE                                                           #
  29. # Copyright 1995-2002 Matthew M. Wright  All Rights Reserved.                #
  30. #                                                                            #
  31. # FormMail may be used and modified free of charge by anyone so long as this #
  32. # copyright notice and the comments above remain intact.  By using this      #
  33. # code you agree to indemnify Matthew M. Wright from any liability that      #
  34. # might arise from its use.                                                  #
  35. #                                                                            #
  36. # Selling the code for this program without prior written consent is         #
  37. # expressly forbidden.  In other words, please ask first before you try and  #
  38. # make money off of my program.                                              #
  39. #                                                                            #
  40. # Obtain permission before redistributing this software over the Internet or #
  41. # in any other medium. In all cases copyright and header must remain intact. #
  42. ##############################################################################
  43. # ACCESS CONTROL FIX: Peter D. Thompson Yezek                                #
  44. #                     http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/62033           #
  45. ##############################################################################
  46. # Define Variables                                                           #
  47. #      Detailed Information Found In README File.                            #
  48.  
  49. # $mailprog defines the location of your sendmail program on your unix       #
  50. # system. The flags -i and -t should be passed to sendmail in order to       #
  51. # have it ignore single dots on a line and to read message for recipients    #
  52.  
  53. $mailprog = ‘/usr/lib/sendmail -i -t’;
  54.  
  55. # @referers allows forms to be located only on servers which are defined     #
  56. # in this field.  This security fix from the last version which allowed      #
  57. # anyone on any server to use your FormMail script on their web site.        #
  58.  
  59. @referers = (‘scriptarchive.com’,‘embeddedcomponents.com’);
  60.  
  61. # @recipients defines the e-mail addresses or domain names that e-mail can   #
  62. # be sent to.  This must be filled in correctly to prevent SPAM and allow    #
  63. # valid addresses to receive e-mail.  Read the documentation to find out how #
  64. # this variable works!!!  It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.                         #
  65. # @recipients = &fill_recipients(@referers);
  66. @recipients = (‘^ronf\@embeddedcomponents\.com’);
  67.  
  68. # ACCESS CONTROL FIX: Peter D. Thompson Yezek                                #
  69. # @valid_ENV allows the sysadmin to define what environment variables can    #
  70. # be reported via the env_report directive.  This was implemented to fix     #
  71. # the problem reported at http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/1187              #
  72.  
  73. @valid_ENV = (‘REMOTE_HOST’,‘REMOTE_ADDR’,‘REMOTE_USER’,‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’);
  74. #@valid_ENV = (‘REMOTE_HOST’,'REMOTE_ADDR’,'REMOTE_USER’,'HTTP_USER_AGENT’,'HTTP_REFERER’);
  75.  
  76. # Done                                                                       #
  77. ##############################################################################
  78.  
  79. # Check Referring URL
  80. &check_url;
  81.  
  82. # Retrieve Date
  83. &get_date;
  84.  
  85. # Parse Form Contents
  86. &parse_form;
  87.  
  88. # Check Required Fields
  89. &check_required;
  90.  
  91. # Send E-Mail
  92. &send_mail;
  93.  
  94. # Return HTML Page or Redirect User
  95. &return_html;
  96.  
  97. # NOTE rev1.91: This function is no longer intended to stop abuse, that      #
  98. #    functionality is now embedded in the checks made on @recipients and the #
  99. #    recipient form field.                                                   #
  100.  
  101. sub check_url {
  102.  
  103.     # Localize the check_referer flag which determines if user is valid.     #
  104.     local($check_referer) = 0;
  105.  
  106.     # If a referring URL was specified, for each valid referer, make sure    #
  107.     # that a valid referring URL was passed to FormMail.                     #
  108.  
  109.     if ($ENV{‘HTTP_REFERER’}) {
  110.         foreach $referer (@referers) {
  111.             if ($ENV{‘HTTP_REFERER’} =~ m|https?://([^/]*)$referer|i) {
  112.                 $check_referer = 1;
  113.                 last;
  114.             }
  115.         }
  116.     }
  117.     else {
  118.         $check_referer = 1;
  119.     }
  120.  
  121.     # If the HTTP_REFERER was invalid, send back an error.                   #
  122.     if ($check_referer != 1) { &error(‘bad_referer’) }
  123. }
  124.  
  125. sub get_date {
  126.  
  127.     # Define arrays for the day of the week and month of the year.           #
  128.     @days   = (‘Sunday’,‘Monday’,‘Tuesday’,‘Wednesday’,
  129.                ‘Thursday’,‘Friday’,‘Saturday’);
  130.     @months = (‘January’,‘February’,‘March’,‘April’,‘May’,‘June’,‘July’,
  131.                ‘August’,‘September’,‘October’,‘November’,‘December’);
  132.  
  133.     # Get the current time and format the hour, minutes and seconds.  Add    #
  134.     # 1900 to the year to get the full 4 digit year.                         #
  135.     ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday) = (localtime(time))[0,1,2,3,4,5,6];
  136.     $time = sprintf("%02d:%02d:%02d",$hour,$min,$sec);
  137.     $year += 1900;
  138.  
  139.     # Format the date.                                                       #
  140.     $date = "$days[$wday], $months[$mon] $mday, $year at $time";
  141.  
  142. }
  143.  
  144. sub parse_form {
  145.  
  146.     # part of server-side spam test
  147.     # initialize our antispam counter
  148.     $spamChunkCount = 0;
  149.  
  150.     # Define the configuration associative array.                            #
  151.     %Config = (‘recipient’,”,          ‘subject’,”,
  152.                ‘email’,”,              ‘realname’,”,
  153.                ‘redirect’,”,           ‘bgcolor’,”,
  154.                ‘background’,”,         ‘link_color’,”,
  155.                ‘vlink_color’,”,        ‘text_color’,”,
  156.                ‘alink_color’,”,        ‘title’,”,
  157.                ‘sort’,”,               ‘print_config’,”,
  158.                ‘required’,”,           ‘env_report’,”,
  159.                ‘return_link_title’,”,  ‘return_link_url’,”,
  160.                ‘print_blank_fields’,”, ‘missing_fields_redirect’,”);
  161.  
  162.     # Determine the form’s REQUEST_METHOD (GET or POST) and split the form   #
  163.     # fields up into their name-value pairs.  If the REQUEST_METHOD was      #
  164.     # not GET or POST, send an error.                                        #
  165.     if ($ENV{‘REQUEST_METHOD’} eq ‘GET’) {
  166.         # Split the name-value pairs
  167.         @pairs = split(/&/, $ENV{‘QUERY_STRING’});
  168.     }
  169.     elsif ($ENV{‘REQUEST_METHOD’} eq ‘POST’) {
  170.         # Get the input
  171.         read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{‘CONTENT_LENGTH’});
  172.  
  173.         # Split the name-value pairs
  174.         @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
  175.     }
  176.     else {
  177.         &error(‘request_method’);
  178.     }
  179.  
  180.     # For each name-value pair:                                              #
  181.     foreach $pair (@pairs) {
  182.  
  183.         # Split the pair up into individual variables.                       #
  184.         local($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair);
  185.  
  186.         # Decode the form encoding on the name and value variables.          #
  187.         # v1.92: remove null bytes                                           #
  188.         $name =~ tr/+/ /;
  189.         $name =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
  190.         $name =~ tr/\0//d;
  191.  
  192.         $value =~ tr/+/ /;
  193.         $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
  194.         $value =~ tr/\0//d;
  195.        
  196.         # part of server-side spam test
  197.         # count number of accesses to internet this email message might have…
  198.         $spamChunkCount = $spamChunkCount + &count_chunks($value, "href=");
  199.         $spamChunkCount = $spamChunkCount + &count_chunks($value, "http:");
  200.         $spamChunkCount = $spamChunkCount + &count_chunks($value, "https:");
  201.         $spamChunkCount = $spamChunkCount + &count_chunks($value, "ftp:");
  202.         $spamChunkCount = $spamChunkCount + &count_chunks($value, "mailto:");
  203.  
  204.         # If the field name has been specified in the %Config array, it will #
  205.         # return a 1 for defined($Config{$name}}) and we should associate    #
  206.         # this value with the appropriate configuration variable.  If this   #
  207.         # is not a configuration form field, put it into the associative     #
  208.         # array %Form, appending the value with a ‘, ‘ if there is already a #
  209.         # value present.  We also save the order of the form fields in the   #
  210.         # @Field_Order array so we can use this order for the generic sort.  #
  211.         if (defined($Config{$name})) {
  212.             $Config{$name} = $value;
  213.         }
  214.         else {
  215.             if ($Form{$name} ne ”) {
  216.                 $Form{$name} = "$Form{$name}, $value";
  217.             }
  218.             else {
  219.                 push(@Field_Order,$name);
  220.                 $Form{$name} = $value;
  221.             }
  222.         }
  223.     }
  224.  
  225.     # The next six lines remove any extra spaces or new lines from the       #
  226.     # configuration variables, which may have been caused if your editor     #
  227.     # wraps lines after a certain length or if you used spaces between field #
  228.     # names or environment variables.                                        #
  229.     $Config{‘required’} =~ s/(\s+|\n)?,(\s+|\n)?/,/g;
  230.     $Config{‘required’} =~ s/(\s+)?\n+(\s+)?//g;
  231.     $Config{‘env_report’} =~ s/(\s+|\n)?,(\s+|\n)?/,/g;
  232.     $Config{‘env_report’} =~ s/(\s+)?\n+(\s+)?//g;
  233.     $Config{‘print_config’} =~ s/(\s+|\n)?,(\s+|\n)?/,/g;
  234.     $Config{‘print_config’} =~ s/(\s+)?\n+(\s+)?//g;
  235.  
  236.     # Split the configuration variables into individual field names.         #
  237.     @Required = split(/,/,$Config{‘required’});
  238.     @Env_Report = split(/,/,$Config{‘env_report’});
  239.     @Print_Config = split(/,/,$Config{‘print_config’});
  240.  
  241.     # ACCESS CONTROL FIX: Only allow ENV variables in @valid_ENV in          #
  242.     # @Env_Report for security reasons.                                      #
  243.     foreach $env_item (@Env_Report) {
  244.         foreach $valid_item (@valid_ENV) {
  245.             if ( $env_item eq $valid_item ) { push(@temp_array, $env_item) }
  246.         }
  247.     }
  248.     @Env_Report = @temp_array;
  249. }
  250.  
  251. sub check_required {
  252.  
  253.     # Localize the variables used in this subroutine.                        #
  254.     local($require, @error);
  255.  
  256.     # The following insures that there were no newlines in any fields which  #
  257.     # will be used in the header.                                            #
  258.     if ($Config{‘subject’} =~ /(\n|\r)/m || $Config{‘email’} =~ /(\n|\r)/m ||
  259.         $Config{‘realname’} =~ /(\n|\r)/m || $Config{‘recipient’} =~ /(\n|\r)/m) {
  260.         &error(‘invalid_headers’);
  261.     }
  262.  
  263.     if (!$Config{‘recipient’}) {
  264.         if (!defined(%Form)) { &error(‘bad_referer’) }
  265.         else                 { &error(‘no_recipient’) }
  266.     }
  267.     else {
  268.         # This block of code requires that the recipient address end with    #
  269.         # a valid domain or e-mail address as defined in @recipients.        #
  270.         $valid_recipient = 0;
  271.         foreach $send_to (split(/,/,$Config{‘recipient’})) {
  272.             foreach $recipient (@recipients) {
  273.                 if ($send_to =~ /$recipient$/i) {
  274.                     push(@send_to,$send_to); last;
  275.                 }
  276.             }
  277.         }
  278.         if ($#send_to < 0) { &error(‘no_recipient’) }
  279.         $Config{‘recipient’} = join(‘,’,@send_to);
  280.     }
  281.  
  282.     # For each require field defined in the form:                            #
  283.     foreach $require (@Required) {
  284.  
  285.         # If the required field is the email field, the syntax of the email  #
  286.         # address if checked to make sure it passes a valid syntax.          #
  287.         if ($require eq ‘email’ && !&check_email($Config{$require})) {
  288.             push(@error,$require);
  289.         }
  290.  
  291.         # Otherwise, if the required field is a configuration field and it   #
  292.         # has no value or has been filled in with a space, send an error.    #
  293.         elsif (defined($Config{$require})) {
  294.             if ($Config{$require} eq ”) { push(@error,$require); }
  295.         }
  296.  
  297.         # If it is a regular form field which has not been filled in or      #
  298.         # filled in with a space, flag it as an error field.                 #
  299.         elsif (!defined($Form{$require}) || $Form{$require} eq ”) {
  300.             push(@error,$require);
  301.         }
  302.     }
  303.  
  304.     # If any error fields have been found, send error message to the user.   #
  305.     if (@error) { &error(‘missing_fields’, @error) }
  306. }
  307.  
  308. sub return_html {
  309.     # Local variables used in this subroutine initialized.                   #
  310.     local($key,$sort_order,$sorted_field);
  311.  
  312.     # Now that we have finished using form values for any e-mail related     #
  313.     # reasons, we will convert all of the form fields and config values      #
  314.     # to remove any cross-site scripting security holes.                     #
  315.     local($field);
  316.     foreach $field (keys %Config) {
  317.         $safeConfig{$field} = &clean_html($Config{$field});
  318.     }
  319.  
  320.     foreach $field (keys %Form) {
  321.         $Form{$field} = &clean_html($Form{$field});
  322.     }
  323.  
  324.  
  325.     # If redirect option is used, print the redirectional location header.   #
  326.     if ($Config{‘redirect’}) {
  327.         print "Location: $safeConfig{‘redirect’}\n\n";
  328.     }
  329.  
  330.     # Otherwise, begin printing the response page.                           #
  331.     else {
  332.  
  333.         # Print HTTP header and opening HTML tags.                           #
  334.         print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
  335.         print "<html>\n <head>\n";
  336.  
  337.         # Print out title of page                                            #
  338.         if ($Config{‘title’}) { print "<title>$safeConfig{‘title’}</title>\n" }
  339.         else                  { print "<title>Thank You</title>\n"        }
  340.  
  341.         print " </head>\n <body";
  342.  
  343.         # Get Body Tag Attributes                                            #
  344.         &body_attributes;
  345.  
  346.         # Close Body Tag                                                     #
  347.         print ">\n  <center>\n";
  348.  
  349.         # Print custom or generic title.                                     #
  350.         if ($Config{‘title’}) { print "<h1>$safeConfig{‘title’}</h1>\n" }
  351.         else { print "<h1>Thank You For Filling Out This Form</h1>\n" }
  352.  
  353.         print "</center>\n";
  354.  
  355.         print "Below is what you submitted to $safeConfig{‘recipient’} on ";
  356.         print "$date<p><hr size=1 width=75\%><p>\n";
  357.  
  358.         # If a sort order is specified, sort the form fields based on that.  #
  359.         if ($Config{‘sort’} =~ /^order:.*,.*/) {
  360.  
  361.             # Set the temporary $sort_order variable to the sorting order,   #
  362.             # remove extraneous line breaks and spaces, remove the order:    #
  363.             # directive and split the sort fields into an array.             #
  364.             $sort_order = $Config{‘sort’};
  365.             $sort_order =~ s/(\s+|\n)?,(\s+|\n)?/,/g;
  366.             $sort_order =~ s/(\s+)?\n+(\s+)?//g;
  367.             $sort_order =~ s/order://;
  368.             @sorted_fields = split(/,/, $sort_order);
  369.  
  370.             # For each sorted field, if it has a value or the print blank    #
  371.             # fields option is turned on print the form field and value.     #
  372.             foreach $sorted_field (@sorted_fields) {
  373.                 local $sfname = &clean_html($sorted_field);
  374.  
  375.                 if ($Config{‘print_blank_fields’} || $Form{$sorted_field} ne ”) {
  376.                     print "<b>$sfname:</b> $Form{$sorted_field}<p>\n";
  377.                 }
  378.             }
  379.         }
  380.  
  381.         # Otherwise, use the order the fields were sent, or alphabetic.      #
  382.         else {
  383.  
  384.             # Sort alphabetically if requested.
  385.             if ($Config{‘sort’} eq ‘alphabetic’) {
  386.                 @Field_Order = sort @Field_Order;
  387.             }
  388.  
  389.             # For each form field, if it has a value or the print blank      #
  390.             # fields option is turned on print the form field and value.     #
  391.             foreach $field (@Field_Order) {
  392.                 local $fname = &clean_html($field);
  393.  
  394.                 if ($Config{‘print_blank_fields’} || $Form{$field} ne ”) {
  395.                     print "<b>$fname:</b> $Form{$field}<p>\n";
  396.                 }
  397.             }
  398.         }
  399.  
  400.         print "<p><hr size=1 width=75%><p>\n";
  401.  
  402.         # Check for a Return Link and print one if found.                    #
  403.         if ($Config{‘return_link_url’} && $Config{‘return_link_title’}) {
  404.             print "<ul>\n";
  405.             print "<li><a href=\"$safeConfig{‘return_link_url’}\">$safeConfig{‘return_link_title’}</a>\n";
  406.             print "</ul>\n";
  407.         }
  408.  
  409.         # Print the page footer.                                             #
  410.         print <<"(END HTML FOOTER)";
  411.         <hr size=1 width=75%><p>
  412.         <center><font size=-1><a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a> V1.92 &copy; 1995 – 2002  Matt Wright
  413. A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt‘s  Script Archive, Inc.</a></font></center>
  414.         </body>
  415.        </html>
  416. (END HTML FOOTER)
  417.     }
  418. }
  419.  
  420. sub send_mail {
  421.     # Localize variables used in this subroutine.                            #
  422.     local($print_config,$key,$sort_order,$sorted_field,$env_report);
  423.  
  424.     # part of server-side spam test
  425.     # Decide if we should skip sending this email because it could be spam
  426.     if ( $spamChunkCount > $spamChunksMax ) {
  427.         print "
  428. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC ‘-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN‘>
  429. <html>
  430. <head>
  431. <title>Error: Request Method</title>
  432. </head>
  433. <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000>
  434. <p>$spamMessage</p>
  435. <p><form>
  436. <input type=\"Button\" value=\"Go back and try again\" onclick=\"history.back()\">
  437. </form></p>
  438. <p><a href=\"$spamChunkErrorLink\">$spamChunkErrorLink</a></p>
  439. </body>
  440. </html>";     
  441.         exit;
  442.     }
  443.  
  444.  
  445.     # Open The Mail Program
  446.     open(MAIL,"|$mailprog");
  447.  
  448.     print MAIL "To: $Config{‘recipient‘}\n";
  449.     print MAIL "From: $Config{‘email‘} ($Config{‘realname‘})\n";
  450.  
  451.     # Check for Message Subject
  452.     if ($Config{‘subject‘}) { print MAIL "Subject: $Config{‘subject‘}\n\n" }
  453.     else                    { print MAIL "Subject: WWW Form Submission\n\n" }
  454.  
  455.     print MAIL "Below is the result of your feedback form.  It was submitted by\n";
  456.     print MAIL "$Config{‘realname‘} ($Config{‘email‘}) on $date\n";
  457.     print MAIL "-" x 75 . "\n\n";
  458.        
  459.     # part of server-side spam test
  460.     # uncomment this next line to view details of antispam logic in action
  461.     # print MAIL "ANTISPAM_URLCOUNT = " .  $spamChunkCount. " diff= ". ($spamChunkCount-$spamChunksMax). "\n\n";
  462.        
  463.  
  464.     if (@Print_Config) {
  465.         foreach $print_config (@Print_Config) {
  466.             if ($Config{$print_config}) {
  467.                 print MAIL "$print_config: $Config{$print_config}\n\n";
  468.             }
  469.         }
  470.     }
  471.  
  472.     # If a sort order is specified, sort the form fields based on that.      #
  473.     if ($Config{‘sort‘} =~ /^order:.*,.*/) {
  474.  
  475.         # Remove extraneous line breaks and spaces, remove the order:        #
  476.         # directive and split the sort fields into an array.                 #
  477.         local $sort_order = $Config{‘sort‘};
  478.         $sort_order =~ s/(\s+|\n)?,(\s+|\n)?/,/g;
  479.         $sort_order =~ s/(\s+)?\n+(\s+)?//g;
  480.         $sort_order =~ s/order://;
  481.         @sorted_fields = split(/,/, $sort_order);
  482.  
  483.         # For each sorted field, if it has a value or the print blank        #
  484.         # fields option is turned on print the form field and value.         #
  485.         foreach $sorted_field (@sorted_fields) {
  486.             if ($Config{‘print_blank_fields‘} || $Form{$sorted_field} ne ‘‘) {
  487.                 print MAIL "$sorted_field: $Form{$sorted_field}\n\n";
  488.             }
  489.         }
  490.     }
  491.  
  492.     # Otherwise, print fields in order they were sent or alphabetically.     #
  493.     else {
  494.  
  495.         # Sort alphabetically if specified:                                  #
  496.         if ($Config{‘sort‘} eq ‘alphabetic‘) {
  497.             @Field_Order = sort @Field_Order;
  498.         }
  499.  
  500.         # For each form field, if it has a value or the print blank          #
  501.         # fields option is turned on print the form field and value.         #
  502.         foreach $field (@Field_Order) {
  503.             if ($Config{‘print_blank_fields‘} || $Form{$field} ne ‘‘) {
  504.                 print MAIL "$field: $Form{$field}\n\n";
  505.             }
  506.         }
  507.     }
  508.  
  509.     print MAIL "-" x 75 . "\n\n";
  510.  
  511.     # Send any specified Environment Variables to recipient.                 #
  512.     foreach $env_report (@Env_Report) {
  513.         if ($ENV{$env_report}) {
  514.             print MAIL "$env_report: $ENV{$env_report}\n";
  515.         }
  516.     }
  517.  
  518.     close (MAIL);
  519. }
  520.  
  521. sub check_email {
  522.     # Initialize local email variable with input to subroutine.              #
  523.     $email = $_[0];
  524.  
  525.     # If the e-mail address contains:                                        #
  526.     if ($email =~ /(@.*@)|(\.\.)|(@\.)|(\.@)|(^\.)/ ||
  527.  
  528.         # the e-mail address contains an invalid syntax.  Or, if the         #
  529.         # syntax does not match the following regular expression pattern     #
  530.         # it fails basic syntax verification.                                #
  531.  
  532.         $email !~ /^.+\@(\[?)[a-zA-Z0-9\-\.]+\.([a-zA-Z0-9]+)(\]?)$/) {
  533.  
  534.         # Basic syntax requires:  one or more characters before the @ sign,  #
  535.         # followed by an optional ‘[‘, then any number of letters, numbers,  #
  536.         # dashes or periods (valid domain/IP characters) ending in a period  #
  537.         # and then 2 or 3 letters (for domain suffixes) or 1 to 3 numbers    #
  538.         # (for IP addresses).  An ending bracket is also allowed as it is    #
  539.         # valid syntax to have an email address like: user@[255.255.255.0]   #
  540.  
  541.         # Return a false value, since the e-mail address did not pass valid  #
  542.         # syntax.                                                            #
  543.         return 0;
  544.     }
  545.  
  546.     else {
  547.  
  548.         # Return a true value, e-mail verification passed.                   #
  549.         return 1;
  550.     }
  551. }
  552.  
  553. # This was added into v1.91 to further secure the recipients array.  Now, by #
  554. # default it will assume that valid recipients include only users with       #
  555. # usernames A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _ and – that match your domain exactly.  If this  #
  556. # is not what you want, you should read more detailed instructions regarding #
  557. # the configuration of the @recipients variable in the documentation.        #
  558. sub fill_recipients {
  559.     local(@domains) = @_;
  560.     local($domain,@return_recips);
  561.  
  562.     foreach $domain (@domains) {
  563.         if ($domain =~ /^\d+\.\d+\.\d+\.\d+$/) {
  564.             $domain =~ s/\./\\\./g;
  565.             push(@return_recips,’^[\w\-\.]+\@\[‘ . $domain . ‘\]‘);
  566.         }
  567.         else {
  568.             $domain =~ s/\./\\\./g;
  569.             $domain =~ s/\-/\\\-/g;
  570.             push(@return_recips,’^[\w\-\.]+\@‘ . $domain);
  571.         }
  572.     }
  573.  
  574.     return @return_recips;
  575. }
  576.  
  577. # This function will convert <, >, & and " to their HTML equivalents.        #
  578. sub clean_html {
  579.     local $value = $_[0];
  580.     $value =~ s/\&/\&/g;
  581.     $value =~ s/</\</g;
  582.     $value =~ s/>/\>/g;
  583.     $value =~ s/"/\"/g;
  584.     return $value;
  585. }
  586.  
  587.  
  588. # This function returns the number of text chucks in a string
  589. sub count_chunks {
  590.     # Usage: &count_chunks("string","substring")
  591.     # Returns: the number of substring chunks found in a string
  592.     # part of server-side spam test
  593.     # reference: http://www.blazonry.com/perl/linkcount_pl.txt
  594.     my $myString;
  595.     my $myChunk;
  596.     my $myInd;
  597.     my $myInd2;
  598.     my $myCount;
  599.     $myString = $_[0];
  600.     $myChunk = $_[1];
  601.    
  602.     #convert text to lowercase
  603.     $myString =~ tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/;     
  604.     $myInd = 0;   $myInd2 = 0; $myCount = 0;
  605.     while ($myInd >= 0) {       
  606.         # get index place of href=
  607.         $myInd = index($myString, $myChunk, $myInd2);           
  608.         if ($myInd  >= 0) {
  609.             $myInd2 = $myInd + 1;
  610.             $myCount = $myCount + 1;
  611.         }
  612.     }
  613.     return $myCount;
  614. }
  615.  
  616. sub body_attributes {
  617.     # Check for Background Color
  618.     if ($Config{‘bgcolor‘}) { print " bgcolor=\"$safeConfig{‘bgcolor‘}\"" }
  619.  
  620.     # Check for Background Image
  621.     if ($Config{‘background‘}) { print " background=\"$safeConfig{‘background‘}\"" }
  622.  
  623.     # Check for Link Color
  624.     if ($Config{‘link_color‘}) { print " link=\"$safeConfig{‘link_color‘}\"" }
  625.  
  626.     # Check for Visited Link Color
  627.     if ($Config{‘vlink_color‘}) { print " vlink=\"$safeConfig{‘vlink_color‘}\"" }
  628.  
  629.     # Check for Active Link Color
  630.     if ($Config{‘alink_color‘}) { print " alink=\"$safeConfig{‘alink_color‘}\"" }
  631.  
  632.     # Check for Body Text Color
  633.     if ($Config{‘text_color‘}) { print " text=\"$safeConfig{‘text_color‘}\"" }
  634. }
  635.  
  636. sub error {
  637.     # Localize variables and assign subroutine input.                        #
  638.     local($error,@error_fields) = @_;
  639.     local($host,$missing_field,$missing_field_list);
  640.  
  641.     if ($error eq ‘bad_referer‘) {
  642.         if ($ENV{‘HTTP_REFERER‘} =~ m|^https?://([\w\.]+)|i) {
  643.             $host = $1;
  644.             my $referer = &clean_html($ENV{‘HTTP_REFERER‘});
  645.             print <<"(END ERROR HTML)";
  646. Content-type: text/html
  647.  
  648. <html>
  649. <head>
  650.   <title>Bad Referrer – Access Denied</title>
  651. </head>
  652. <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000>
  653.   <center>
  654.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#9C9C9C>
  655.     <tr><th><font size=+2>Bad Referrer – Access Denied</font></th></tr>
  656.    </table>
  657.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#CFCFCF>
  658.     <tr><td>The form attempting to use
  659.      <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a>
  660.      resides at <tt>$referer</tt>, which is not allowed to access
  661.      this cgi script.<p>
  662.  
  663.      If you are attempting to configure FormMail to run with this form, you need
  664.      to add the following to \@referers, explained in detail in the
  665.      <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/formmail.html">README</a> file.<p>
  666.  
  667.      Add <tt>’$host‘</tt> to your <tt><b>\@referers</b></tt> array.<hr size=1>
  668.      <center><font size=-1>
  669.       <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a> V1.92 &copy; 1995 – 2002  Matt Wright
  670.       A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt’s  Script Archive, Inc.</a>
  671.      </font></center>
  672.     </td></tr>
  673.    </table>
  674.   </center>
  675.  </body>
  676. </html>
  677. (END ERROR HTML)
  678.         }
  679.         else {
  680.             print <<"(END ERROR HTML)";
  681. Content-type: text/html
  682.  
  683. <html>
  684.  <head>
  685.   <title>FormMail v1.92</title>
  686.  </head>
  687.  <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000>
  688.   <center>
  689.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#9C9C9C>
  690.     <tr><th><font size=+2>FormMail</font></th></tr>
  691.    </table>
  692.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#CFCFCF>
  693.     <tr><th><tt><font size=+1>Copyright 1995 – 2002 Matt Wright
  694.         Version 1.92 – Released April 21, 2002
  695.         A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt‘s  Script Archive,
  696.         Inc.</a></font></tt></th></tr>
  697.    </table>
  698.   </center>
  699. </body>
  700. </html>
  701. (END ERROR HTML)
  702.         }
  703.     }
  704.  
  705.     elsif ($error eq ‘request_method‘) {
  706.             print <<"(END ERROR HTML)";
  707. Content-type: text/html
  708.  
  709. <html>
  710. <head>
  711.   <title>Error: Request Method</title>
  712. </head>
  713. <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000>
  714.   <center>
  715.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#9C9C9C>
  716.     <tr><th><font size=+2>Error: Request Method</font></th></tr>
  717.    </table>
  718.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#CFCFCF>
  719.     <tr><td>The Request Method of the Form you submitted did not match
  720.      either <tt>GET</tt> or <tt>POST</tt>.  Please check the form and make sure the
  721.      <tt>method=</tt> statement is in upper case and matches <tt>GET</tt> or <tt>POST</tt>.<p>
  722.  
  723.      <center><font size=-1>
  724.       <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a> V1.92 &copy; 1995 – 2002  Matt Wright
  725.       A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt’s  Script Archive, Inc.</a>
  726.      </font></center>
  727.     </td></tr>
  728.    </table>
  729.   </center>
  730.  </body>
  731. </html>
  732. (END ERROR HTML)
  733.     }
  734.  
  735.     elsif ($error eq ‘no_recipient’) {
  736.             print <<"(END ERROR HTML)";
  737. Content-type: text/html
  738.  
  739. <html>
  740.  <head>
  741.   <title>Error: Bad/No Recipient</title>
  742.  </head>
  743.  <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000>
  744.   <center>
  745.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#9C9C9C>
  746.     <tr><th><font size=+2>Error: Bad/No Recipient</font></th></tr>
  747.    </table>
  748.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#CFCFCF>
  749.     <tr><td>There was no recipient or an invalid recipient specified in the data sent to FormMail.  Please
  750.      make sure you have filled in the <tt>recipient</tt> form field with an e-mail
  751.      address that has been configured in <tt>\@recipients</tt>.  More information on filling in <tt>recipient</tt> form fields and variables can be
  752.      found in the <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/formmail.html">README</a> file.<hr size=1>
  753.  
  754.      <center><font size=-1>
  755.       <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a> V1.92 &copy; 1995 – 2002  Matt Wright
  756.       A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt‘s  Script Archive, Inc.</a>
  757.      </font></center>
  758.     </td></tr>
  759.    </table>
  760.   </center>
  761. </body>
  762. </html>
  763. (END ERROR HTML)
  764.     }
  765.  
  766.     elsif ($error eq ‘invalid_headers‘) {
  767.             print <<"(END ERROR HTML)";
  768. Content-type: text/html
  769.  
  770. <html>
  771. <head>
  772.   <title>Error: Bad Header Fields</title>
  773. </head>
  774. <body bgcolor=#FFFFFF text=#000000>
  775.   <center>
  776.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#9C9C9C>
  777.     <tr><th><font size=+2>Error: Bad Header Fields</font></th></tr>
  778.    </table>
  779.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#CFCFCF>
  780.     <tr><td>The header fields, which include <tt>recipient</tt>, <tt>email</tt>, <tt>realname</tt> and <tt>subject</tt> were
  781.      filled in with invalid values. You may not include any newline characters in these parameters.
  782.      More information on filling in these form fields and variables can be
  783.      found in the <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/readme/formmail.html">README</a> file.<hr size=1>
  784.  
  785.      <center><font size=-1>
  786.       <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a> V1.92 &copy; 1995 – 2002  Matt Wright
  787.       A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt’s  Script Archive, Inc.</a>
  788.      </font></center>
  789.     </td></tr>
  790.    </table>
  791.   </center>
  792.  </body>
  793. </html>
  794. (END ERROR HTML)
  795.     }
  796.  
  797.     elsif ($error eq ‘missing_fields’) {
  798.         if ($Config{‘missing_fields_redirect’}) {
  799.             print "Location: " . &clean_html($Config{‘missing_fields_redirect’}) . "\n\n";
  800.         }
  801.         else {
  802.             foreach $missing_field (@error_fields) {
  803.                 $missing_field_list .= "<li>" . &clean_html($missing_field) . "\n";
  804.             }
  805.  
  806.             print <<"(END ERROR HTML)";
  807. Content-type: text/html
  808.  
  809. <html>
  810.  <head>
  811.   <title>Error: Blank Fields</title>
  812.  </head>
  813.   <center>
  814.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#9C9C9C>
  815.     <tr><th><font size=+2>Error: Blank Fields</font></th></tr>
  816.    </table>
  817.    <table border=0 width=600 bgcolor=#CFCFCF>
  818.     <tr><td>The following fields were left blank in your submission form:<p>
  819.      <ul>
  820. $missing_field_list
  821.      </ul>
  822.  
  823.      These fields must be filled in before you can successfully submit the form.<p>
  824.      Please use your browser‘s back button to return to the form and try again.<hr size=1>
  825.      <center><font size=-1>
  826.       <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html">FormMail</a> V1.92 &copy; 1995 – 2002  Matt Wright
  827.       A Free Product of <a href="http://www.scriptarchive.com/">Matt’s  Script Archive, Inc.</a>
  828.      </font></center>
  829.     </td></tr>
  830.    </table>
  831.   </center>
  832.  </body>
  833. </html>
  834. (END ERROR HTML)
  835.         }
  836.     }
  837.  
  838.     exit;
  839. }
  840.  

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]]> http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/how-to-fix-dean-lees-source-code-highlight-plugin/feed/ 6 How to Display Source Code Within WordPress http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/test-display-of-source-code-using/ http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/test-display-of-source-code-using/#comments Fri, 25 May 2007 18:11:19 +0000 Ron Fredericks http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/test-display-of-source-code-using/ Ron Fredericks writes: I have a problem in common with many software engineers and technical managers – “How can I display source code within my blog?”

See, the problem starts when the source code to be displayed interacts with the blogging software itself and then corrupts the blog’s own loop-and-display engine. Thus, the blog page becomes corrupt or at the very least, becomes mis-formatted and hard to read. Of course it would also be nice to color code a software snippet similar to a source code editor to make the posted source code easier to read.

I tried several techniques during my Internet search for “WordPress source code formatting”. I discovered a common theme – there are source code display and highlighting methods available – in fact too many are available. So the search became a “needle in the haystack” time sink. And the sad fact, most choices have some severe limitations.

But at last, I found Dean Lee’s blog post: Source Code syntax highlighting plugin for WordPress (V1.1)

Dan’s pluglin for WordPress has all the features I was looking for:

  • installs as a simple plugin for WordPress
  • usage within a blog post is easy through the use of the pre tag
  • source code displays in its own container with line numbers for reference
  • a reader should be able to easily select a range of displayed source code and copy it for their own use (without also selecting the displayed line numbers)
  • source code display should not break my WordPress blogging software


Dean’s plugin uses an open-source project hosted by sourceforge.net to handle the language-specific highlighting called: GeSHi – Generic Syntax Highlighter for PHP.

GeSHi delivers the other requiements I was looking for in display of source code within WordPress:

  • source code should display with language-aware color coding
  • code should be open-source with an active developer community
  • display controls should include support for lots of popular languages

We do have to modify our WordPress CSS style sheet before using Dean’s plugin. Here is a display of the update he suggests we make to our template…

Update to wp-content/themes/eciWidget/style.css

Code (css)
  1.  
  2. /* Add the following CSS styles for Dean’s code Highlighter */
  3. .ch_code_container {
  4. background-color: #f0f0f0;
  5. border: 1px solid #C3CED9;
  6. padding: 0px 0px 0 0;
  7. width: 100%;
  8. text-align: left;
  9. font-size:1.00em;
  10. overflow:auto;
  11. }
  12. .ch_code_container .head
  13. {
  14. color: #808080;
  15. font-weight: bold;
  16. background-color: #f0f0ff;
  17. border-bottom: 1px solid #d0d0d0;
  18. padding: 2px;
  19. }
  20.  


Here is an image of a popular perl sendmail package with my new antispam patch included…using Dean’s Highlighter Plugin and his default CSS styles loaded into my WordPress template…

Dean's Highlighter Sample Output Using Default CSS Template

As you can see, the display window above highlights the perl language syntax and is safely contained. But, yhuk! What’s going on with the display? The main problems were easily solved with Dean’s plug-in – but let’s fix that word wrap mixed with horizontal scroll bar problem.

]]> http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2007/05/test-display-of-source-code-using/feed/ 18 Bloglines RSS Aggregator Widget 1.0 http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2006/11/bloglines-rss-aggregator-widget-10/ http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2006/11/bloglines-rss-aggregator-widget-10/#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2006 20:24:51 +0000 Ron Fredericks http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs/2006/11/bloglines-rss-aggregator-widget-10/ Ron Fredericks writes: This is my first WordPress Widget development effort, or my first WordPress *anything* pretty much. However, I provide my best effort to offer a complete and useful widget following the guidlines published by WordPress and the spirit of quality. It is a widget following Atomattic’s Widget offering for managing our blog’s sidebar. It was inspired by a conversation with a friend of mine, Mukesh Lulla, co-founder of embedded security software provider TeamF1. Mukesh suggested that I might want to have a list of news and blog links that are relevant to my user base. This is the resulting widget I dreamed up. I hope you like it, but your comments and guidance are welcome either which way.

You can see Embedded Components‘ blinesAgg widget in action on this blog’s sidebar with the title: Embedded Device Updates

Download Widget

You can download and extract the zipped blinesAgg.php version 1.0.2 widget from here: blinesAgg.zip

Features

The blinesAgg WordPress widget displays a list of selected news and blog RSS syndicated feeds as a list of links:

  • Links can be collected from a neat RSS service called Bloglines
  • Links are collected using the Bloglines search engine
  • You select the desired search words to search for links you think might be cool for those that read your blog
  • No user account on Bloglines is used, just their search engine
  • Any number of additional RSS feeds can be aggregated from extra sites to complete your list
  • Page access to RSS feeds can be cached using an embedded copy of lastRSS, by Vojtech Semecky, for efficient use of your web server

Once blinesAgg widget is installed, you can configure the widget using a simple web form:

  • Title
  • Number of links to display
  • Bloglines search parameters: search words to use, and search words to exclude
  • *List of other RSS feeds you would like to include in your list of aggregated links

*Because sometimes there may not be enough links found within your requested Bloglines search. Given some combinations of search and avoidance words, you may want to list extra RSS feeds to be used to fill out the remaining total number of links you would like to display. That’s why I added the extra feeds form entry. But, you may want to skip the Bloglines search feature and just use the extra feeds as your RSS aggregator.

How-To

Installation on your server:

  1. Place the php widget file (blinesAgg.php) in your WordPress wp-content/plugins/widgets subdirectory. You can skip all the optional installation steps [2 to 6] that I suggest next.

  2. Optional Installation: For speed and reliability I modified lastRSS to use cURL to read remote web pages, if your server does not support cURL then disable this feature using this global configuration variable (*): $USEcURL. The cURL feature also includes a timeout parameter. Timeout is set initially to 20 seconds. If your list of links fails to appear, you may need to change this parameter (*) too: $cURLtIMEOUT. See the optional installation test bullet point below to see how to identify specific problems, where their located, and how to fix them.
  3. Optional Performance Improvement: Create a subdirectory for cache storage of feeds with read/write privilege. For the subdirectory to be readable and writable on a UNIX box, you will need to use the command: “chmod 777 your_cache_directory”. Then let your blinesAgg widget know about it using some predefined global variables I have defined for this purpose. You can: activate, define cache subdirectory, and set cache refresh time using three global configuration variables (*): $USEcACHE, $CACHEdIR, and $CACHEtIME. Note: if you create a cache directory named “temp” in your widget subdirectory, then you can just use the default setting I already defined for $CACHEdIR. When you download the widget from my site here, the initial default setting for cache is to be disabled. To use the cache technique, you would still have to change this global variable to enable the cache feature: $USEcACHE = true.
  4. Optional duplicate display control: I notices that Bloglines search engine returns with some titles nearly duplicated but from diffrerent web sites. Use this flag to control the skip duplicated titles feature (*): $SKIPdUPS
  5. Optional control of named anchor link: Use this named anchor within other hypertext links to referr to your blinesAgg widet on your blog’s home page. The default setting (*): $BLINESaNCHR = ‘blinesAgg’. Usage: example: http://www.embeddedcomponents.com/blogs#blinesAgg
  6. Optional Installation Test: To verify that your installation is done correctly, you may want to set the debug variable below (*) named $DEbUG to “true”. Then complete configuration as usual and view your blog sidebar. With this debug feature activated, your configuration panel may show error messages if something is not configured correctly. Also, you should see your maximum number of links under the Title you defined without any error messages. Press your browser’s page refresh a few times to exercise the widget. Any errors encountered will be displayed by the php error handler activated as a result of setting the $DEbUG variable to “true”. The error handler will report error number, error text, and line number within blinesAgg.php where the error occurred. My suspicion that my new cache directory was not working properly was the reason I added an error handler in the first place. Indeed based on the error report, I failed to change read/write privileges for the cache directory. To fix the problem I had to launch a telnet session to change the read/right permission of my cache directory on my web server using chmod 777. Meanwhile, I had placed the cache directory in the wrong place so I had to move it into the correct subdirectly. I’m talking about the directory you create and the path to it as defined by $CACHEdIR and its read/write permission. If all is well, you can disable the debug feature by resetting the $DEbUG variable to “false”. If this seems confusing, as it did for me at first, then just leave the cache disabled until you really want or need the speed advantage.

*References to configuration parameters means that you would open the php file using a text editor or something like Dreamweaver, and locate the first few lines of php source code below the initial comments in the program file blinesAgg.php. I show the default settings for all global configuration variables in the next section – below.

Optional configuration within blinesAgg.php source code [with default settings shown]:

$DEbUG = false;
$USEcURL = true;
$cURLtIMEOUT = 20;
$USERaGENT = "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)";
$SKIPdUPS = true;
$BLINESaNCHR = 'blinesAgg';
$USEcACHE = false;
$CACHEdIR = './wp-content/plugins/widgets/temp';
$CACHEtIME = 3600;
$INITtITLE = "Bloglines Aggregator";
$INITmAXCOUNT = '10';
$INITtAGS = array('embedded', 'device');
$INITnOTAGS = array('engineer', 'job', 'engr');
$INITeXTRAFEEDS = array('http://feeds.feedburner.com/embeddedstar', 'http://slashdot.org/slashdot.rdf');

Configuration within WordPress:

The figure presented here shows what options are configurable from within the widget menu. Default values are shown using IE 6 browser.

Configuration Screen Shot

  1. Enable the Bloglines RSS aggregator widget plugin from your "administrator -> plugins" menu
  2. Drag your blinesAgg widget to the sidebar from your "administrator -> presentation -> sidebar widgets" menu
  3. Open the widget and configure your blinesAgg widget using the built-in form for: title, number of entries to display, search words that must appear in the Bloglines link text, and search words that must not be present in the Bloglines link text
  4. Because sometimes there will not be enough links found within a Bloglines search given some combinations of search words, you may configure extra RSS feeds to be used to fill out the remaining total number of links you would like to display
  5. To skip the Bloglines RSS search feature altogether, and just use this widget as your RSS feed aggregator, then just delete the search words during configuration
  6. Close the widget and save your changes. Visit your WordPress home page to see the list of new found links displayed in your sidebar.

Some initial notes on compatibility:

  • I only tested it with WordPress 2.04 using a modified default theme
  • It seems to work under all typical conditions on Mac OS X and current FireFox and Safari web browsers, as well as PC Windows XP with IE 6
  • During dynamic configuration I did notice that Mac OS X and Safari web browser (only) does not work to configure any Widget. This is because the link to open the configure menus are not visible. FireFox worked OK but with some less than perfect background color issues

Who-From

Thanks:

  • I would like to thank the folks at Atomattic for giving us the WordPress Widget along with sample widgets from which I learned how to develop blinesAgg
  • I would like to thank Per Søderlind for introducing me to the power of Vojtech Semecky's lastRSS.php object code and how to use it to collect RSS feeds as a WordPress plugin through his blog posts

References:

You-Too

License:

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

    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.

    To read the license please visit:
    http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

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