209 lines
9.6 KiB
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209 lines
9.6 KiB
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN">
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<title>Book Review: Website Automation Toolkit LG #33</title>
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<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#A000A0"
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ALINK="#FF0000">
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<H4>
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"Linux Gazette...<I>making Linux just a little more fun!</I>"
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</H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<center>
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<h1><font color="maroon">Book Review: Website Automation Toolkit</font></h1>
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<H4>By <a href="mailto:">Andrew Johnson</a></H4>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<img align="left" src="./gx/johnson/2930f1.jpg">
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<P>
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<ul>
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<li>Author: Paul Helinski
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<li>Publisher: John Wiley
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<li>E-mail: info@wiley.com
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<li>URL: http://www.wiley.com/
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<li>Price: $44.99 US
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<li>ISBN: 0-471-19785-8
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</ul>
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<P>
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<P> <HR> <P>
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<i>Website Automation Toolkit</i> is a collection of tools, most created
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by the author's company, which range from allowing simple configuration
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control over the look and feel of your entire site to remote
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creation of and updating pages on the site to shopping carts and
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simple database facilities. It is not a book about running and configuring
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web servers or teaching the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) protocol.
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<p>
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The introductory preface and first chapter address
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the motivation behind the book and a few of the benefits of using
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some form of automation in maintaining your web site. Next are
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two chapters discussing some of the alternatives
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(and alternative proprietary software) to the author's CGI-oriented
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approach to automation.
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<p>
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The majority of the tools provided are, in fact, Perl CGI programs
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created by the author's company. These tools are officially free.
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While the license in the book states that you are
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not allowed to redistribute them without permission, you are
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allowed to use and install them as many times and for as many
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clients as you wish. This seemed a bit contradictory, so I asked
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the author for some clarification. He responded with the
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following statement (used with permission):
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<blockquote>
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I don't do courts, but the intent of the license is to
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prevent people from putting our utilities on shareware CD-ROMs
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without the supporting text. It's more of a support issue
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than an ownership one. I wrote the book because these things
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were far too useful to keep to ourselves.
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</blockquote>
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Chapters 4 and 5 mark the transition into the main part of the
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book by providing a short justification for why Perl is the
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language of choice, and a brief introductory overview of Perl basics. This
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overview is not intended as a guide to the
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Perl programming language, but merely to acquaint the user with
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some of the essentials so that later sections on configuring and
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customizing Perl scripts will be less daunting to the
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inexperienced.
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<p>
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The remaining chapters provide a tool-by-tool installation and
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instruction manual. There are too many tools to cover them all with
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any detail, so I will very quickly run through the remaining
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chapters and follow with my general impressions.
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<p>
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Chapter 6 covers SiteWrapper, a package that wraps your site so
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that all of your pages are served by a CGI program. Chapter 7
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introduces Tickler, a program for soliciting e-mail addresses of
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visitors and notifying them of content changes. Chapter 8 follows
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with a discussion of the freely available
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Majordomo mailing list software for creating and maintaining
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mailing lists.
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<p>
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Chapter 9 addresses tracking visitors with discussions of the
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Trakkit tool (requires SiteWrapper) and the freely available
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Analogue program. Chapter 10 covers a Shopping Cart package
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(a modified SiteWrapper program) along with some order processing utilities.
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<p>
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Chapter 11 covers WebPost, the utility which, according to the
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author, sparked the book. This system allows you to create, edit,
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delete or upload pages to your site and automatically generate
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or update the cross links among pages.
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<p>
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Chapter 12 provides three search utilities for your site,
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depending on whether you are using SiteWrapper, WebPost or neither.
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Chapter 13 covers the AddaLink tool for creating and maintaining
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a hot list of links. Chapter 14 covers QuickDB, a simple text-based
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database engine with a browser interface for adding, editing and
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deleting entries.
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<p>
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Chapter 15 presents a Bulletin Board utility, and also discusses
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using FrontPage for a Discussion Board. Chapter 16 takes the next
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step by covering a couple of freely available Chat programs.
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<p>
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Chapter 17 provides a couple of search engine agents, one to
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submit a URL to a multitude of search engines and two more which
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report your location on the search engines. The final chapter
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presents BannerLog and ClickThru, tools which track and log
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click-throughs and page views of banner ads on your site.
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<p>
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I set up a dummy site on my Linux box for installing and trying
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out a few of the provided utilities. The installation instructions in each chapter are
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divided into UNIX and NT sections and are relatively simple to
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follow. However, some unfortunate problems arose.
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<p>
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There are .zip files for each package, and non-zipped directories
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for each of the packages on the CD-ROM. A mild inconvenience is
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that some of the .zip files were created with extraneous path
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information included, and the individual files in the non-zipped
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directories are riddled with ^M characters. The author has created
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a web site where you can find problem reports and corrections, and
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``cleaner'' versions of the source files for downloading. The
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site is located at http://www.world-media.com/toolkit/.
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<p>
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Another inconvenience is that every Perl script must be checked
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(and possibly edited) for the proper path to Perl on
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your system, there is no script provided to automate this task,
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although writing one would be trivial for any experienced Perl
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programmer. Note that even if the first script you examine has the
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proper path, others definitely will not--so you must check
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and edit those with the incorrect path for your system.
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<p>
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More serious problems arise with the Perl code. None of
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the <b>open</b> calls for reading and writing files are consistently
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checked for success or failure. You'll first notice a problem
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when you install the SiteWrapper package and try to change the
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color scheme of your site with the included SiteColors program.
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The installation guide omits mentioning that your server will
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need write access to the tagfile.dat file where the color
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scheme is stored. Since the program does not check the return
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value of the open call, it will fail silently, your color
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scheme will not be updated and no error will be present in your
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server's logs. I'd seriously recommend locating all calls to the
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open function in all .cgi scripts and adding at least a
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<tt>||die "$!";</tt> statement to those that don't
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have it.
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<p>
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Other deficiencies with the Perl scripts are that they are not <tt>-w</tt> clean (for warnings), won't compile with
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the ``strict'' pragma, do not use <tt>-T</tt>
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for taint checking and use the older cgi.pl library rather than the
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CGI.pm module for Perl 5.
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<p>
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Even with the above comments and concerns, the packages are, for
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the most part, easy to install and get working. Installation and
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configuration of the basic SiteWrapper package took less than an
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hour, including time spent checking and cleaning the source code
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and creating simple header and footer files and a couple of dummy
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pages. When using this system, every page is served from a CGI
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program, even essentially static pages. This method allows for a great deal
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of flexibility and a centralized configuration style of
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management, but could become costly in terms of server load if
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your site is large or heavily trafficked.
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<p>
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I had a little more trouble getting the WebPost system running
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properly, mainly because I chose to set it up in a subdirectory
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of the SiteWrapper directory and a few issues were involved
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in getting the two packages to play nicely together. Once it was
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set up, however, it worked as advertised. While I found parts
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of the interface to be a bit clunky for creating web pages, it is
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a functional way to create and edit pages remotely using
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a browser.
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<p>
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Other tools were less problematic to install, Trakkit for example--I was
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tracking and logging myself within a few minutes of unpacking the
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package.
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<p>
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On the whole, if you are looking for instant ``shrink-wrap''
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automation software with point-and-click setup and configuration,
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you'll be disappointed. However, typical Linux users accustomed
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to file-based configuration should have little trouble with
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these tools, especially if they already have some experience with
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Perl programming. The programs are not stellar
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examples in their present incarnation, but they can provide an
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inexpensive automation system for budding webmasters willing to get their hands dirty with a little Perl code.
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Hopefully, many of the concerns mentioned above will be addressed in a
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future edition.
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<!--===================================================================-->
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<P> <hr> <P>
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<center><H5>Copyright © 1998, Andrew Johnson <BR>
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Published in Issue 33 of <i>Linux Gazette</i>, October 1998</H5></center>
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