Intergrate other applications

MKDoc does not have a form to email handler built in but often web sites need forms that send email, this how to explains how to intergrate soupermail, the same method can be used for any other web application.

Soupermail is a a very flexible form handler written in Perl and it is available from the Soupermail Sourceforge site.

Create new directories

You will need to set up a cgi-bin directory where the script can be run, for example, /var/www/your-mkdoc/site/cgi-bin/ and a seperate directory for the soupermail configuration files, eg /var/www/your-mkdoc/site/soupermail/.

Apache config

The key with the apache configuration is to have a ScriptAlias for soupermail before the MKDoc aliases, for example:

  ScripAlias /.soupermail   /var/www/your-mkdoc/site/cgi-bin/soupermail.pl
  Alias      /              /var/www/mkdoc-1-6/cgi/mkdoc.cgi/

The directory where soupermail is installed needs to be able to run CGi applications:

  <Directory /var/www/your-mkdoc/site/cgi-bin/">
     Options ExecCGI    
     AddHandler cgi-script .pl
     order allow,deny
     allow from all
     AllowOverride none
  </Directory>

Install Soupermail

Soupermail does have one depandancy that is generally not installed on most distributions, MIME:Lite, this can be installed from CPAN.

Put the script in the new cgi-bin directory, check the path to perl and the other variables and make it execuatable, following are the variables that you will probably need to change:

$soupermailAdmin = 'vittal.aithal@bigfoot.com';
$privateRoot = "/home/httpd/soupermail.sourceforge.net/private";
$mailhost = 'localhost';
$mailprog = '/usr/lib/sendmail';

The mail settings will be different for different systems, if you are running Fedora Core / Red Hat then the mails settings should be changed to:

$mailhost = '';
$mailprog = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';

You will need to create a private root directory, say, /var/www/your-mkdoc/site/soupermail/ - this is where all the confif files will go.