Ok, I will assume that everybody got in and created a remote thumbs account and got their sponsor codes set up.
So, now we have to do a little bit of server stuff, create a settings file for remotethumbs and create a template (or two)
First we have to create 3 folders on the server and change permissions on them.
We need a folder for the thumbnails that remotethumbs will give to us to be stored in.
We need a folder for the script that remotethumbs will produce to live.
We need a folder for the template(s) we will create for remotethumbs
The thumbnail directory can be named anything you want, however, it will only be used by remotethumbs, you won't be putting stuff into this folder, only the remotethumbs script will.
Once you have created the thumbnail folder, you need to make sure that permissions on the folder are set to 777. If you do not know how to change/check permissions, you can either Telnet into your server and do the chmod at the command line, or in some ftp programs, you can click on the folder name, go to properties or permissions and change it there.
To do it through telnet:
Fire up your telnet program and log in to your server.
from the telnet prompt enter: CHMOD 777 domainfolder/thumbnailfolder
ie, if I were doing this on my server on my sexeducatoon domain, from my telnet prompt I would type in CHMOD 777 sexeducation.com/thumbnailfolder
Now,it is important to note that 777 permissions means that as far as the server is concerned, everyone has read, write and execute permissions on that folder. This is necessary for the operation of the script apparently.
A nice little page with some info on permissions is at
http://cals.arizona.edu/ecat/web/permissions.html
Note- added late: You also need to check and make sure the premissions for your script directory are set to 755. If not CHMOD them to 755.
The folder for the remote thumbs script should be created inside your cgi-bin folder on your server. Something like 'scripts' as a name works just fine.
The folder for the templates can be called 'templates'
Jot down the names of the directories you created because you will need them once we start defining the settings.
Now, we are also going to need a couple of pieces of information that may or may not be readily available:
1. The physical path on the server to the thumbnail directory we created. This usually looks something like /home/username/domainname/thumbnaildirectoryname
or
/web/yoursite.com/html
Something along those lines. If you don't know it then you can ask your host for it.
2. The physical path on the server to the template directory we created.
3. The url to the script directory we created:
ie:
http://www.domainname.com/cgi-bin/rthumbs-script/
4. The url to the thumbnail directory we created:
ie:
http://www.domainname.com/rthumbs
5. The physical path to where the perl command is on your server:
ie: /usr/local/bin/perl
Again, this is something you can ask your host for.
Continued in the morning.......