URLWatch Setup

URLWatch is a service for your web site visitors that informs them when individual pages on your site have been modified. Visitors may sign up for as many pages as they want to, simply by entering their email address in the URLWatch form located on each of your web pages and then clicking the Submit button.

Notification messages are processed as frequently as you wish and will include any pages updated during the previous twenty-four hours. Each visitor (ie, each unique email address) will receive ONE message from your site which will include all modified URL's that they have signed up for. If none of their specific pages have been modified in the past twenty-four hours, they will not receive any messages from you at all.

Visitors may return to your web site to modify their list of pages via an URLWatch Maintenance Form (default filename, "urlmaint.html"). They will need to enter their email address and passID which is found on their MOST RECENT notification message. A new, unique passID is assigned each time they receive a message, and this is the only passID that will work for them at a given time. All old passID's are invalid once they are superseded by a new one. If the visitor selects "remove" for all of their URL's, they are subsequently removed from the database.

The main advantage of placing URLWatch on your site is the high degree of personalization that you can provide. Instead of sending visitors to an outside site, you are keeping them on your site, complete with your page design and messages custom tailored to your audience. Of course, you can use the default files we have created (only a minimal amount of modifications are necessary) if you aren't interested in customizing them at this time. You can also specify how what time of day the notification messages are sent.

Initially, there are a number of files for you to create and/or modify. We've provided a template for each of these files, along with basic instructions on what needs to be changed. In general, there are a limited number of items that MUST be modified to correspond with your web site: "yourdomain.com" needs to be changed to your domain name (ie, abigailsphotos.com), "Your Site Name" needs be be changed to an appropriate site name (ie, Abigail's Photo Gallery), and "someemailaddress@yourdomain.com" needs to be changed to an appropriate email address where you want to receive comments/questions about your URLWatch service (ie, urlwatch@abigailsphotos.com or webmaster@abigailsphotos.com).

Most of these files are saved to the \data\urlwatch directory you will be creating. These files are a combination headers/footers/middles of HTML and email responses that your visitors will receive. One file, urlwatch.conf will be created and placed in the data directory and will act as a roadmap for managing the response messages. One file, urlmaint.html is an actual HTML file and needs to go in your html directory. And the final one is a cut and paste template of the actual signup form. This is the only file that requires more than a basic modification or two in that it must be specific to EACH AND EVERY page on your site that contains the form. It's just one tiny piece of text to change, but it's crucial that it be specific to each page. The last file to modify is the crontab file, which will specify when notification emails are sent out.

The following set of instructions will guide you through setting up your own personal URLWatch notification service on your web pages. When appropriate, we've included a separate sample or template file for you to modify. Sample templates are located in the "share" directory on the Innovative Web Communcations web server.

Contact Innovative Web Communications at support@invweb.net and let us know you want to include URLWatch on your site. Tell us what name you wish to assign to your database (your user account name is the default) and what directory you'd like your urlwatch.conf file to go (default is the \data directory). Once you've notified us, we will create your database files and perform a few administrative tasks necessary to get URLWatch online for you. You will receive a confirmation email message once this is done.
Create a "data" directory in the root directory of your Innovative Web Communications account.
Create a subdirectory called "urlwatch" in the \data directory.
Create a file called urlwatch.conf and place it in the \data directory. This file is the basic configuration file for URLWatch and you must specify the correct filenames and/or paths. We have included a sample "urlwatch.conf" file for you, and it MUST be maintained in this format -- you only need to modify the paths and/or filenames to match your domain.
Create the following list of files and place them in the \data\urlwatch directory. Please note that the filenames below are suggested names and correspond to the filenames referenced in the urlwatch.conf file.
If you want to modify the filenames, you must also change their names in the urlwatch.conf file.
FILE LIST:
Email segments:
- email.closing -- ending portion of the email notification message (text format)
- email.intro -- starting portion of the email notification message (text format)
Error segments:
- error.already -- error received when someone is already registered for that page (HTML)
- error.auth -- error received when the email/passID are invalid (HTML)
- error.email -- error received when the email address format is invalid (HTML)
- error.form -- error received when the form fails (HTML)
Maintenance segments:
- maint.footer -- bottom portion of the page received after modifications are made/attempted (HTML)
- maint.header -- top portion of the page received after modifications are made/attempted (HTML)
- maint.success -- center portion of the page received after modifications are made successfully (HTML)
Signup segments:
- signup.footer -- bottom portion of the page received after the initial signup is made/attempted (HTML)
- signup.header -- top portion of the page received after the initial signup is made/attempted (HTML)
- signup.success -- center portion of the page received after the initial sigup is made/attempted (HTML)
Sample files have been created for you, and in most cases can be used as defaults. However, you may wish to modify them and make them more personal. For example, the HTML headers and footers can contain background images, logos, banner ads, buttons, email links, and text personalized to your web site. Naturally, the advantage to customizing the headers and footers is that it provides a seamless service for your site.
Modify and include the urlmaint.html file in the \html directory. This is the page your visitors must go to when they want to modify their list of URL's.
Cut and paste the URLWatch signup information from urlwatch.signup onto your existing web pages.

Edit the crontab file by typing < crontab -e > while in a telnet session. It is located in a hidden directory, so don't save one to the \data\urlwatch directory because it won't work from there.

Include the following line in the file:

0  1  *  *  * /home/httpd/bin/urlmail   /home/acctname/data/urlwatch.conf

which will send messages out at 1:00 a.m., every day.

Each asterisk (*) stands for the following, from left to right and has a range of values:

minute (0-59)
hour (0-23)
day of month (0-31)
month (0-12)
day of week (0-6, with 0=Sunday)
* any, meaning every minute/hour/day/month/day of week

The first path name must stay as is, the second path name must include your proper account name and the directory where your urlwatch.conf file is located.

Test URLWatch by signing up yourself -- make sure your responses are coming out the way you intended.

Enjoy!