SCRATCH_PAD Setting

CHECK_FOR_NEW_VERSION Index CLEANUP_TIME

This page documents the SCRATCH_PAD configuration setting in FormMail.

Type Of Setting

SCRATCH_PAD is an OPTIONAL setting, which means...

OPTIONAL : you can change this setting if you need to, but the default value is fine for most circumstances.

Précis

Sets the directory for temporary files.

Description

Set SCRATCH_PAD to a directory/folder into which FormMail can create files. The SCRATCH_PAD directory/folder must be writable by your web server software. On Linux, the following mode should work:

rwxrwxrwx

If you set it, the SCRATCH_PAD directory/folder is used for CHECK_FOR_NEW_VERSION processing and any other time FormMail needs to create a temporary file. If you don't set it, then FormMail uses your system's temporary directory (e.g. /tmp on Linux).

Note that to use file uploads with multi-page forms, you will need to set SCRATCH_PAD so that FormMail has a private temporary directory/folder to store uploaded files while moving between the pages of your multi-page form. Your server's system temporary directory/folder is not sufficiently reliable to support multi-page forms.

We recommend you create the directory above your web server Document Root directory/folder, if possible. For example, if your web pages are served from:

/home/your-site/public_html

create a directory/folder called:

/home/your-site/fmscratchpad

This more secure as no browser will be able to view the scratch pad directory/folder.

Do not specify a system directory/folder where other FormMail installations may write to (this is possible if you're on a shared hosting server).

We recommend specifying the full path (not a relative path) in SCRATCH_PAD.

NOTE: on Windows servers, use '/' instead of '\' or double the '\', like this:

"d:\\path\\to\\scratchpad"

"d:/path/to/scratchpad"

Default Value

$SCRATCH_PAD = "";

Examples

$SCRATCH_PAD = "/home/mysite/tmp";