1. ftp article04.cgi to your cgi-bin/thecgibin directory
2. on telnet change directories to cgi-bin/thecgibin and enter the command 'perl -wc article04.cgi'.
   • you should get the response 'article03.cgi syntax ok'
   • make the specified change to your count program, taking care to follow instructions depending upon whether you're using SSI or an HTML image to call the program, compile on telnet after ftp'ing to be sure it's clean



3. now that the program's on your server and compiles cleanly, you need to run program04.cgi from your browser.
   • first set the chmod to 755 and then run it.
   • now get on your browser and point to the cgi program as your url... it should execute and then show you the cookie it created on your monitor (that's what the second print statement was for).
   • be sure to now reset the chmod to 744 so nobody else can execute your program, otherwise you won't be counting their visits to your site
   • now look at the counter value in your data directory, then surf your site a bit and look again.
   • of course you might be registering hits because someone else was surfing at the same time, but if you look at three pages and register three additional hits, then try again and it still happens... probably not a coincidence.
   • finally you can call your best friend and have them look at your site to be sure the counter works for others.
   • better still, why not get a second browser installed on your machine? remember that cookies are browser specific, so if you've got IE and Netscape installed you'll only be 'uncounted' on IE but not Netscape if it was IE where you ran the program04.cgi program from

That's because now you're not only dealing with the server computer and operating system but also your own client machine and the browser you happen to be running. To make matters worse, the command to write a cookie has to be issued as part of the header information of the CGI program, which is why we have two separate "\n" carriage control characters printing.

Look at the program again. It sets the cookie, and then apparently sets it again. Huh?

Actually the first 'Set-Cookie:' command tells the browser to create our cookie, the second gets printed to the screen as plain old HTML text. The two \n characters printed out between these commands indicate that the header is complete and we are now sending HTML to the browser when we print.

1. when running the program which makes the cookie, let it finish completely
2. look at the source for the page that program04.cgi creates and compare it to the program, it should all make sense since it comes right from the program
3. check your cookie file and see if the information has been stored there... BUT be aware that cookie info can be cached in RAM by the browser so to see it written out to a disk file you may have to quit the browser first
4. if you're failing on program04.cgi and getting no output to the browser at all, and you've checked the permissions and the program compiles cleanly on the server (using telnet) then move the 'print "\n";' line up above the first set-cookie line. this will permit you to see what's going on because you won't be trying to set the cookie anymore
5. remember the set-cookie command has to execute before you can print any HTML out to the browser, so you're kind of stuck w/o following the suggestion above
6. another way to handle debugging is on the command line. if you execute the program from telnet you won't be able to set a cookie because you'll be using telnet rather than a web browser. however you will be able to see the variables being set, at least it's some help.