How to use PageWest's WebPage.cgi

And what about a numeric pager? Simply change the "textarea" to an "input" of type "text", like so:

Send a message to my pager!  <br>

<form method="POST" action="http://www.pagewest.net/cgi-bin/WebPage.cgi">
<input type="hidden" name="function" value="send_page">
<input type="hidden" name="pagerid" value="5551234">
<input type="text" name="message" size="12" maxlen="20">
<br>
(numbers only, hit Enter to send)
</form>

And here's what that looks like in your web browser:

Send a message to my pager!

Ok, so that's fine and dandy, and should be quite useful for most people. But there's more functionality you can use in WebPage.cgi if you want/need to.

Now you definitely don't want to do this with a Numeric pager, but for AlphaNumeric folks it might be nice to have a place for the person paging you to enter their name (yes, sometimes they do forget). Simply add a form element called "name", and you'll get a nice little "From Joe: ..." at the beginning of your message. Example so:

Got an urgent message?  You can page me:

<form method="POST" action="http://www.pagewest.net/cgi-bin/WebPage.cgi">
<input type="hidden" name="function" value="send_page">
<input type="hidden" name="pagerid" value="5551234">

Your Name: 
<input type="text" name="name" size="20">  <br>

My Message:  <br>
<textarea name="message" rows=5 cols=48></textarea>  <br>
<input type="submit" value="Send It!">
</form>

And you'll end up with something that looks about like this:

Got an urgent message? You can page me:

Many alphanumeric pagers only allow 130 characters per page, but the WebPage.cgi program will allow up to 250. If you want to specify a lower limit according to what your pager supports, you need an input form element named "limit". Eg.:

Most folks only carry one pager personally, so this feature probably won't make it on very many people's personal web pages. But say you're in an office with 10 people who you page regularly, and don't care to memorize all 10 pager numbers - you can make yourself a private web page (even store it on your local harddrive if you want) with saved "pointers" to everybody's pager numbers with an easy selection list, like so:

<center> <h2> My Pager Page </h2> </center>

<p>
<form method="POST" action="http://www.pagewest.net/cgi-bin/WebPage.cgi">
<input type="hidden" name="function" value="send_page">

To:
<select name="pagerid" size="1">
	<option value="5551230"> John Doe
	<option value="5551231"> Jane Doe
	<option value="5551232"> Jim Doe
	<option value="5551233"> Jerry Doe
	<option value="5551234"> Julie Doe
	<option value="5551235"> Jen Doe
	<option value="5551236"> Jesse Doe
	<option value="5551237"> Joel Doe
	<option value="5551238"> Josh Doe
	<option value="5551239"> Janet Doe
</select>

<br>

Name: 
<input type="text" name="name" size="20">  <br>

Message:  <br>
<textarea name="message" rows=5 cols=48></textarea>  <br>
<input type="submit" value="Send Message">
<input type="reset" value="Reset/Clear">
</form>

Now in your web browser, that's going to look just about like so:

I'm sure this feature has come in more handy for me as I've written/modified various cgi scripts, but perhaps you might at some time have a need for it too, so I'll document it. Basically this tag simply tells WebPage.cgi to dump all the names/values of the html form elements it ended up with. It is a simple:

<input type="hidden" name="debug" value="1">

and won't do very much until you actually submit the form to the web server. If you're just dying to see what it looks like, type something:

WebPage.cgi is of course a cgi program, and like all cgi programs, it's input comes primarily from form elements on a web page. There are different types of form elements, which basically give you different interaction with the user of your web page on how to get the input you want, but all that's really important is that certain elements are assigned the right "name" attribute, and I suppose that the corresponding "value" is correct/usable/etc. If none of this makes sense, you should go read up on HTML, or use the examples above to get you by.

Of course you need to start the form off with a <form> tag pointing to the URL of WebPage.cgi, and probably a method attribute, like so:

<form method="POST" action="http://www.pagewest.net/cgi-bin/WebPage.cgi">

Required Elements

There are 3 required elements:

function

Set this to "send_page".

pagerid

This is the pager number you want the message sent to.

message

This is the text of the message. For numeric pagers, this should be be all digits (though you'd have to use javascript (or maybe java) to actually check that no letters, etc. have been entered).

Ok, so why even have the "function" element if it can only have one value? Simple - it's used by "reentrant" calls to the cgi program to tell it what function it's performing. (ie. the program uses it) Probably setting this in a type "hidden" input tag is easiest.