MetaGenerator

Installation Notes

To install MetaGenerator on your server download metagen.tar.gz file, uncompress and extract files. You will see four files: manual.htm (this file)
update.htm
update.pl

update2.pl

Put manual.htm and update.htm in the same directory under WWW document root directory. Put update.pl and update2.pl into CGI-BIN directory which is configured to execute Perl scripts.

Uncomment header lines in update.pl and update2.pl files and modify them to have correct paths to WWW document root directory, user's directories and keywords files.

Current version of MetaGenerator installed under Apache WWW server, OS Solaris 2.5. There is also version working under Windows NT 3.51. Author will be happy to receive your critical comments and recommendations. Please send them to vitaly@wdcb.rssi.ru

Some recommendations

General type of document

It is recommended to select WDC Data option if document describes or contains data which have WDC Data Status as it defined in the ICSU Guide on WDCs.

Documents describibg or containing data which are collected and managed by IGBP community should be marked as IGBP Data.

Other documents related to data and information concerning Earth Sciences in broad sense should be marked as Other Earth Science Data & Information.

Document expiration time

Putting an expiration date on your document is a good idea if you want to write robot-friendly pages. A robot that parses a <META> tag with an expiration date knows when it should revisit the page to index fresh content. This way, you are assured that all of the Web indexes are able to keep up-to-date with the changes you make to your pages.

Time interval for Client Pull option

This option is applicable only to those documents which are updated frequently in real time (like weather machine, etc.) You can instruct the browser to reload your document after a specific number of seconds. It is not recommended to use this option with static documents.

Name and E-mail address

Put your name and E-mail address in corresponding fields. Current version makes simple check of E-mail syntax, i.e. looks if at sign "@" and at least one dot "." exist in the E-mail string.

Edited document location

Let your document root directory location is: /home/www/documents and under root directory there is a subdirectory DATA containing file stpdata.html. Your input must be /DATA/stpdata.html

Let you are willing to edit document mydata.html in your home directory /home/userdir/WWW , where WWW subdirectory is configured to be processed by WWW server. In this case your input must be /~userdir/mydata.html, where ~ is the prefix used for user's directory (ask your Webmaster what is particular prefix on your server).

Home directory

For security reasons it is recommended to put temporary file, logfile and finally edited file into separate subdirectory under your home directory. For example, you have TEMP subdirectory in your home directory, then your input must be: /home/userdir/TEMP. Be sure that TEMP directory has necessary permissions for writing into it. Note, that script will suggest you to look on finally edited file through your WWW browser. Be sure that that selected subdirectory under your home directory is processed by WWW server.