The Maryland CCs who are affected by this are a bit upset at the short notice. :( Are there any suggestions on how best to deal with this? Should they try to use another program to index the queries and other pages now indexed by Surname Helper? Is there some way they can easily copy the existing Surname Helper indexes to their county pages and continue using them? Or is there some better approach? Shari Handley MDGenWeb State Coordinator DEGenWeb State Coordinator [-----Original Message----- [From: Richard (Isaiah) Harrison [mailto:IsaiahH@cox.net] [Sent: Monday, April 21, 2003 1:37 PM [To: STATE-COORD-L@rootsweb.com [Subject: [STATE-COORD-L] SURNAME HELPER [ [ [(Please forward to your State lists.) [ [Effective 1 May 2003, RootsWeb will discontinue support for [Surname Helper [and remove it from their servers. [ [Surname Helper users must select some other indexing program in their [profile settings (such as CCHelper [<http://www.rootsweb.com/~cchelper/>) as [the program that indexes Query Express. This must be done [before Surname [Helper is removed from RootsWeb's servers. [ [-Isaiah [ [Richard "Isaiah" Harrison [National Coordinator [The USGenWeb Project

> Are there any suggestions on how best to deal with this? Should they > try to > use another program to index the queries and other pages now indexed by > Surname Helper? Is there some way they can easily copy the existing > Surname > Helper indexes to their county pages and continue using them? Or is > there > some better approach? > Shari, I asked on the Rootsweb Help list about using mailmerge in the same manner that we used QueryExpress for gathering the queries. Elsi sent the instructions at the bottom of my message for use on the www server. I haven't had time to work on them yet, but plan on setting up my counties with the mailmerge form which will post the query to a temporary webpage and send a copy by email to me. I plan on continuing use of CCHelper. The only difference is that the surnames won't be indexed by SurnameHelper any more. Connie ------------- begin documentation ---------------- Step 1 -- your input form In the form tag, change the ACTION from action="/cgi-bin/local/mailmerge.cgi/~account/template.txt" to action="/cgi-bin/local/FormMerge.cgi/~account/template.txt" (Of course, the account name & the name of your template file must be properly specified.) Note that the program name is MixEd case & must be specified exactly as shown above. Step 2 -- your template (Your existing template will work just fine with the enhanced script, so if you make no changes to your template, you should get the same results as MailMerge is giving you now.) FormMerge is capable of creating two outputs. There are two things you need to do: 2a -- the ACTION= parameter in the template. FormMerge accepts the following ACTION parameters: ACTION=mail ACTION=file: /~account/filename.html ACTION=both{mail}{file: /~account/filename.html} ACTION=both{file: /~account/file1.html}{file: /~account/file2.html} You can use this new function to essentially have two ACTIONs within one template. So, you can write to a guestbook and send mail or you could write to two separate files. By default, the two actions will both use the same OUTPUT_FORM template. 2b -- Create additional template sections (optional) By default, the two actions will both use the same OUTPUT_FORM template. But, you can supply the following to distinguish between variables: OUTPUT_FORM_1 OUTPUT_FORM_2 MAIL_HEADER_1 MAIL_HEADER_2 These template variables work exactly like the corresponding ones without the "_1" and "_2". Again, this is optional but does give you the ability to write the form entry to the end of a guestbook file and a condensed version to an "index" file, or you can append to a guestbook and mail a notification to yourself that someone has made a guestbook entry so you'll know immediately via email who is posting what to your guestbook. ----------------- end documentation -------------