Hi,

First the good and bad. I have downloaded and done the quick install of Links2 and everything went
smoothly. The bad is that the script is pretty advanced and comes with almost no documentation other than the install instructions. I'm pretty much a newbie to Perl scripts installation and customisation but I still
want these links to integrate nicely into the site I'm working on design wise.

I started investigating the template system included with Links2. I was hoping it would be pretty easy and it
is but there are some limitations to using the template system. It appears to me that to really do some
customising in the look of Links2 that you have to fiddle with site_html and go beyond site_html_templates.
Since I don't really know Perl I need some help altering the HTML inside the site_html file.
I can see that the HTML code snippets always follow 'output' but i'm not sure where to stop adding the html
code I want to add to make the Categories and Links look the way I want using my own template.
What is this '\n' I see in Perl scripts? When is it necessary to use it and why?
Am I right in that when I look at the templates included with Links2 that where it says <%category%>,
that the script builds the category according to the html code included in site_html in the category section?
I took a tour of some of the sites using Links2 and found one that makes Links2 appear like a UBB forum,
I want to try this design. In this design he has split the category into a table with individual cells for
the title, number of links, description etc. So any help editing the site_html file to get this layout would be much appreciated.

I also have some categories that will need some different fields(not sure if this is the term) for people to
check off when they add a link to my directory. Let's say I wanted to make one category a sorta personals
biography section.......just a description isn't enough ........ i would want them to check off if they were
M or F......city they live in......age...... things like that. How do I add new 'fields' or 'records' in the add
page and then how to make them show up in the html output on my pages?

Lastly, banner ads. For now I am fine with just using static ads. But reading through the forums am I to understand that most banner ad scripts can't be used from within a CGI script like Links2 which generates
static HTML pages? I was hoping to one day add a PHP or Perl banner system and thought using the template system I could just add the banner add code in my template. It's not that easy right? Cuz I see a bunch of discussions of mods for using banner ad rotators. It got me to thinking tho, on pretty much most
sites on the Net like the search engines like AltaVista they do seem to be using CGI generated ad systems
integrated into their CGI driven search engine. I guess I just don't understand why one CGI script can't
be inside another one.

If I'm way off the mark in understanding how Links2 works please let me know now before I go off causing
alot of grief for myself. It's better to have the concept down before really digging into something, to know
the limitations.

Thanks much

MTommy