Hello all,

I have made an external Rate-It mod so that you may allow your users to Rate sites without them having to be on yoru site. (i.e. cgi-resources.com)

I have posted the instructions on how to do this on my server. It is really simple to do and generates LOTS of traffic for your site.

How I have it working is after a person 'rates' a site on an external page, the person is givin a success page from my server, a logo from my site pops up, thanks them for voting then returns them to the site they were on.

Users love this because 1) it gives them activity on their site & 2) it does not take users away from their site, BUT it does give you free advertising.

Take a look at the instructions and please note there is NO support from me for this mod, you are on your own, I jsut wanted to share it with all who wants to use it.

This is for Links 2.0 and does NOT work with the Templates, although Im sure it would be easy to do if someone wants.

raburn.net/mods/ratemod.html

Enjoy!!!


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MRaburn
Raburn Network Solutions
www.raburn.net


[This message has been edited by MRaburn (edited February 28, 1999).]

Hey, I am trying to use this for the templates.

I setup a template with a meta refresh tag called rate_home_success.html

and then I added a sub in the site_html_templates.pl

sub home_site_html_rating_form_success {
# --------------------------------------------------------
# This routine determines how the rate success page will look like for external sites.

&html_print_headers;
print &load_template ('rate_home_success.html', {
%in,
%globals
});
}

=========

Well, when I rate the rating page loads again instead of refreshing. Any clues-template users, perl experts?

An adaption of this fantastic mod for template users is available at:

speculativevision.com/rateit/rateitmod.shtml

I have included a sample template if you need help with the HTML. You will have to modify it to match your site, but I've included a lot of comments in the source code (including new CSS codes for your style sheet) so it should be fairly easy.

Please note that I wasn't able to figure out how to pass additional variables from the script to the page, so you're stuck with the rated site's name and URL unless one of the CGI gurus lurking around here has any ideas.



[This message has been edited by Brad Richardson (edited March 03, 1999).]

An updated mod and sample template is now available that allows you to pass any variable you want to the template, including the rating that was just received (it was just a case of using the right case--*LOL* I made a funny!)

Thanks for the help Cal!!!

Thanks Guys, Excellent Job.

Hello,
I have set up the external rate it along with the template version but am receiving an error message when I test it.

CGI ERROR==========================================
Error Message : fatal error: Undefined subroutine &main::home_site_html_rating_form_success called at /usr/www/websourc/httpd/cgi-bin/web/ratehome.cgi line 114.
Script Location : /usr/www/websourc/httpd/cgi-bin/web/ratehome.cgi
Perl Version : 5.00404Form Variables




Line 114 reads:
&home_site_html_rating_form_success($id, $url, $title, $votes, $rating);

Any assistance will be sincerely appreciated.

Thank you,
Hope

Check to be sure your site_html_templates.pl addition looks like this:


Upload it again, double check permissions, then see if it works.

Hi!

I just installed the modification for the templates so now I can have an external rating system.

The question is: what happens with the old one? What happens with the TOP RATED Links section of the page? Still works even with this new system?

I mean, does it reflect the new external rating results?

Thanks! and KUTGW!!!

------------------
Alex Tutusaus
Atyc WebDesigns
http://www.webcamworld.com/

Hello Brad,
Thank you for your assistance. I really appreciate it. I checked out the code in the site.html.templates.pl and everything appears to be ok now. When I tested it I received an error message stating an error occurred. I checked my error log and this was the reason:

malformed header from script. Bad header=<HTML>

Any Clues?

Thanks,
Hope

MRaburn's idea is great.

However, there is one problem for non-english character.

The source code doesn't recognize other languages like bellow;
Thank you for voting for "¿ì¸®³ª¶ó´ëÇÑ ¢¯¡þ¨öA".

You are being returned now.
Please Click Here if your Browser does not go back.


Have an idea ?

webcamworld :

The external ratings simply allow users to vote from their site without visiting yours. It uses a success page hosted on your site that tells them it was okay, then sends them back and it ADDS the vote to the internal voting system that comes with links. Its just an addon to it allowing them to vote from remote.

Hope that helps




------------------
The Crowe crowe@darkspiral.com
www.darkspiral.com
www.lit.org

Hope-


Unfortunately, I know zippo about server errors, and I don't know under what circumstances you would get this one. Hopefully someone familiar with header errors can direct you to the right place to look.

In any event, since you were initially getting stuck when the script tried to call sub home_site_html_rating_form_success and are now getting past that point, I assume from your post that you found a typo or something which is now fixed. If you didn't change anything else in the site_html_template.pl (and its otherwise working for other functions), I don't see how this script could be giving an error. The changes needed in ratehome.cgi are limited to the "require" statements and location of perl, so I don't think that can be the problem either.

Based on that, and keeping in mind that this is a totally blind guess, perhaps there's an HTML error in your remote_rate_success.html template that's preventing your server from parsing the document???? Are all of these elements present and accounted for?:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

If so...I'm afraid I haven't a clue

Hello Brad,
Thank you for your reply. I have decided to start over from square one and hopefully I can get everything going. I appreciate you taking the time to help me. Good luck to you

Take Care
Hope

Crowe (or any1 usign this Mod),

So if I've understood this well, the external rating will add votes automatically viewable using the default Links TOP RATED page, right?



------------------
Alex Tutusaus
Atyc WebDesigns
http://www.webcamworld.com/

Webcamworld,

If you are asking whether it counts the votes and shows then in the top rated page the answer is, yes.