First Time Setup is used to setup your entire program. From here, you will specify many things, such as if your program is a forced matrix or network marketing, the fields contained in your member database, whether your program contains multiple member types or not, plus much more.

First Time Setup - Part 1

When you first click on the First Time Setup button, a page will be loaded, titled First Time Setup - Part 1. The first question in this form asks for the home page of your web site. For this field, enter the home page of your self replicating web site. This is so, if someone goes to a member's web site without specifying a web page, like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/show.cgi/jsmith/

Then the script will automatically default to and print this web page, instead of giving off an error.

The next question asks if you would like your member's self replicating web sites to be either, static or dynamic. With dynamic web sites, no space is used up on the web server at all for the web pages. Instead, a small CGI script, show.cgi, is used to dynamically display the member's web sites. If your using dynamic web sites, the URL to member's web sites will look something like this:

http://www.yourdomain.com/show.cgi/username/index.html

The only problem with dynamic web sites, is that your member's URL will have that show.cgi in them. With static web sites, the script will create the actual web pages on your server for every member. This takes up A LOT of space on your web server, because instead of only having one copy of the web site on your server, there will be a seperate copy for every member! Also, if you use static web pages, you can not give each of your member's their own hit tracker, and the Reports->Web Site Statistics feature of the Admin Control Panel will not work. However, the URL of your member's web sites will look normal, like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/members/username/index.html

The next question asks if you would like to give each of your member's their own personal hit tracker. Unfortunately, this feature can only be used with dynamic web sites, not static. If you enable this feature, what happens is, the traffic / hits to every member's web site is automatically logged by the script. This allows you and members to view how many people are visiting the web site, where they're coming from, and what pages in the site they are going to.

The fourth question asks if you would like your program to contain multiple member types. This is for if you have more than one different kind of member in your program. For example, you might have free and paid members. If you enable this option, if wanted, you may have a different web site and commission plan for each member type. The next question asks if you would like to encrypt your member passwords. This provides much better security for your member's passwords because instead of being stored as plain text, they will be encrypted. Unfortunately, there is no way to decrypt the member's password once encrypted, so you will never be able to see your member's passwords. Instead, you will just see, <--ENCRYPTED-->.

The next two questions ask what type of authentication you would like to use for your Member's Only Area, and your Admin Control Panel. You have a choice between the NCSA (.htaccess), or cookie based authentication. The NCSA (.htaccess) authentication type is when that small box pops up in the middle of your browser, asking for your Username and Password, when you try to enter a certain directory of a web site. This is a very safe and proven method of authentication. Unfortunately, by using this type of authentication for your Member's Only Area, since it is a standalone program and not part of the Web Site Replicator, the script can not log when your member's login, and how often they login.

With cookie based authentication, you login through a normal HTML form. When you login, the script will give the member's browser a small piece of information called a cookie. Every time you load a page either in the Member's Only Area, or the Admin Control Panel, the script will check for this cookie in your browser, and if not found will prompt you for your username and password. For increased security, the cookie based authentication also uses random encryption to make it much harder for people to gain unauthorized access to your Member's Only Area. The one great thing about using the cookie based authentication for your Member's Only Area is that the script will log everything a member logs in, and the exact date and time of every login.

The next question asks if you would like to have the newuser.cgi script generate a random password for every member who joins your program. The one reason you may want to do this is to make sure every member joins with a valid e-mail address. Think about it, if this option is enabled, when a new member joins, their password will be e-mailed to them so the e-mail address they submit must be valid. The next question asks if you would like all new members who join your program to start out inactive. This means, every time a new member joins, their self replicating web site will not work, and they will not be able to access the Member's Only Area, until you manually activate the member from the Admin Control Panel. One reason you may want to enable this feature is to verify member's payment information before giving them access to the Member's Only Area.

The next question asks if you would like to add a set amount to the sponsor's commission field when a new member joins. So what this means is, when a new member joins your program, do you want to have a set amount automatically added to the commission field of the sponsor(s) of that new member? If you select yes, you will specify the set amount to add to the sponsor(s) later on in the First Time Setup. The next and last question of the General Information section asks who you would like the script to automatically send an e-mail message to when a new member joins.

The next section of this page is titled, Database Information, and there is only one question in this section. The question asks how many fields you would like your member database to contain, without counting the Username, Sponsor or Commission fields. For example, if you want to store your member's name, e-mail address, phone number and password, you would enter 4 in this field.

The next section, titled Member's Only Area Information once again, only contains one question. The question asks which of the following actions you would like your members to be able to perform from the Member's Only Area. So in other words, after a member logs into your Member's Only Area, which of the following actions are they allow to perform? All you need to do here is check off the actions you would like member's to be able to perform.

The next section, titled Automatic Update Information asks questions about what you would like the script to automatically do after a set amount of time? The first question asks if you would like to automatically update all member's commissions at a set time. You know how many programs out there offer something like $10 per month for every member in your downline. Well, that's exactly what this means. Do you want to have the script automatically give each member a set amount of commission for every person in their downline? You will be able to choose whether this happens daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly. Also, you can specify a different amount for each downline level,, and if your program contains multiple members, for each member type. The next and last question of this section asks if you would like to have the script automatically backup all member information at a set time? You will be able to choose if this happens daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly.

The last section, titled Program Information only contains one question which asks you if you would like your program to be a forced matrix or not. If you select yes to this question, the next page will ask you for the width and height of your matrix. However, if you select no, then your downlines will have unlimited widths, and the next page will ask you how many levels deep you would like you downlines to be. Once you have completed filling out the form on this page, submit the form to continue onto the second page of the First Time Setup.

First Time Setup - Part 2

The first section in this page, titled Database Information contains one row for every userfield you wanted in your member database. For each row, enter the name of a field you would like your member database to contain. The field names can not contain spaces or special characters. Also, please do not enter username, sponsor or commission for any of the fields because the script automatically enters these fields in. A few examples of field names are, name, email, phone and password.

The next section, titled General Information asks a few general questions, depending on what you entered in the last page. This section may not contain any questions, all depending on what you entered in the previous page. The first question that may be there asks how many different member types you would like your program to contain. For example, if you are going to have free and paid members, you would enter 2 in this field. The next two questions are pretty straight forward. They ask if you would like to have a different web site and commission plan for each different member type. Just select yes or no for these two questions.

The next question will only appear if you chose to use static web pages. This question asks for the full path on your server to the directory where you member web sites will be stored. So, for this you must create a directory on your web server, for example, members. Then enter the full path on your server to that members directory. If you do not know how to find the full path on your server to a directory, please click here to visit the Telnet tutorial included with this manual.

The next question will only appear if you chose to use the NCSA (.htaccess) method of authentication for your Member's Only Area. This method of authentication protects an entire directory, not just a file. For this reason, you must have the members_only.cgi script in a directory of its own. Enter the full path on your server to the directory which contains the members_only.cgi script. If you do not know how to find the full path on your server to a directory, please click here to visit the Telnet tutorial included with this manual.

The next section, titled Program Information asks several questions about your program structure, whether it be a forced matrix or not. If your program is not a forced matrix, the only question in this section will ask how many levels deep would you like your downlines to be. For example, if you put 3 for this field, when a new member joins, that new member will be placed into the first level of their sponsor, the second level of the sponsor's sponsor, and the third level of the sponsor's, sponsor, sponsor. See how that works?

However, if you chose that your program will contain forced matrixes, there will be two more questions in this section. The first of which asks you how wide you would like your forced matrix to be. The second of the two questions asks who you would like the script to automatically send a confirmation message to after a member have completed their matrix. The reason this question exists is because in some programs, the members are given a bonus when they fill their matrix. This will notify whoever you want when a member fill their matrix. You will be able to completley customize the messages which are sent out for this.

The last section, titled Automatic Update Information will only contain one question if you selected that you would like the script to automatically backup all member information. This question just asks how often you would like the script to backup all member information. Once you have completed filling out the form, submit the form to continue onto the third page of the First Time Setup.

First Time Setup - Part 3

The first three questions of the first section, titled Database Information ask which userfield in the member database will contain your member's names, e-mail addresses and passwords. This is so when the script does something like sends an e-mail to a member, it knows which field contains the member's e-mail address. All you have to do here is select the userfield from the pull down select box provided. The next question asks which userfields you would like your member's to be allowed to edit from the Member's Only Area. When a member logs into the Member's Only Area, they may be allowed to edit their profile. This just specifies which fields they are allowed to edit, and which fields they are not allowed to edit.

If your program contains multiple member types, there will be one last section, titled Member Information, which contains one row for every different member type your program will contain. All you need to do here is enter a different name in every row. The names can not contain spaces or special characters.

First Time Setup - Part 4

In this page, you will be setting the amounts which will be added onto a member's commission field for when a new member joins under them, and if applicable, when the script automatically updates member's commissions. The first section, titled Commission Information asks you to specify an amount to add onto the sponsor(s) of a new member. For example, if your downline goes 3 levels deep, you could have your program setup so your member's receive $20 for everyone who joins directly under them, $15 for everyone placed in their second level, and $10 for everyone placed in their third level. If your program contains multiple member types, and you chose to have a different commission plan for every member type, there will be a section for each member type here. Please remember, the amounts you enter here will ONLY be added onto a member's commission when a new member is placed in their downline. Please do not put any spaces or special characters like $ or % in these fields.

If you chose to have the script automatically update your member's commission at set times, the next section, titled Automatic Update Information asks for the amounts you would like to give each member for every member in their downline. For example, if your downline is 3 levels deep, you could have it setup so your members receive $10 for every member in their first level $5 for every member in their second level, and $3 for every member in their third level. What happens is when the script automatically runs and updates the commissions, it will go through every member, and count up how many members are in each level of their downline, then multiply that by the amount you specify here. Then of course, add that amount onto the member's commission field. If your program contains multiple members, and you chose to give every member type a different commission plan, there will be a seperate section for each member type here. Please do not put any spaces or special characters like $ or % in these fields.

The next question asks how often you would like the script to automatically run and update your member's commissions. You may select daily, weekly, biweekly or monthly. The next two questions ask if you would an e-mail sent to every member after the script updates their commission, and if you would like an e-mail sent to you giving information on every member when their commission is updated. You will be able to completley customize both of these messages if you select yes.

Once you have completed filling out the form, submit the form to finish the First Time Setup process of the Web Site Replicator v3.0. A success screen should appear, and when it does, follow any directions which it contains.