How To Activate A Form?

[betsyrc]

I am thinking about having a form on a Web site that I have designed. It would be a simple form, one that would be a text field for comments - or perhaps just some lines to provide an address, as is required for donations for political campaigns.

 

Although I have not made one before, I think I can do so in Dreamweaver. But how would I have it activated?

 

I've read in the HOT Dreamweaver CS3 text that "almost all reputable Web hosting providers have services to help you get your forms working." I am sure that TCH has such services.

 

My question: where and how do I find information? I did look in the scripting section but saw nothing relevant there (and don't understand scripting, anyway! )

 

(I also have another question that I don't know where to look and that's about subdomains. I assume TCH supports them but where would I find information?) The form question, however, is more pressing!

 

thanks very much,

Betsy

[TCH-Bruce]

For help with creating forms check out W3Schools.

 

Yes, you can have subdomains on your account. You create them in cPanel. What ever name you give to your subdomain will be the folder name created inside the public_html directory where you should place your content for the subdomain.

[betsyrc]

Thank you!

 

For help with creating forms check out W3Schools.

 

Between the W3Schools and lynda.com, I think I can find and make the form(s) I need. My question has to do with activation of the

form. I noted in the lynda.com DW text, "You just have to design and create (the forms) and then let your hosting provider activate them." What do I need to do to have TCH activate the form?

 

 

Yes, you can have subdomains on your account. You create them in cPanel. What ever name you give to your subdomain will be the folder name created inside the public_html directory where you should place your content for the subdomain.

 

Okay, got it. Not sure if subdomains are how I want to go but it certainly looks simple via the cPanel!

 

Betsy

[TCH-Bruce]

To activate the form it's part of the

keyword.

 

><form action="mailto:you@yourTCHdomain.com" method="post">

 

Your action can be one of the following:

* An email address, e.g., action="mailto:BillG@lunix.net";

* A CGI script on your web server, e.g., action="/cgi-sys/formmail.pl";

* A page that will process the data, e.g., action="mysearch.php"

* Another URL, e.g., action="../index.htm".

[Jeter2Fan93]

To activate the form it's part of the <form> keyword.

 

><form action="mailto:you@yourTCHdomain.com" method="post">

 

Your action can be one of the following:

* An email address, e.g., action="mailto:BillG@lunix.net";

* A CGI script on your web server, e.g., action="/cgi-sys/formmail.pl";

* A page that will process the data, e.g., action="mysearch.php"

* Another URL, e.g., action="../index.htm".

 

Correct. I have my action set to a thanks.php page so that the form is sent to my email, but the end user sees a nice page thanking them and letting them know the form was sent successfully.

[betsyrc]

About a year later (smile), I am back. It wasn't critical then and, not knowing what to do, I gave up.

 

I now have a form that a developer made for me. It's a simple form, comments and thanks. And it's in a folder which I have on the site. He wrote, "Basically though, just unzip and upload this folder - then set the premissions for the data.txt file on your server to rwx-rwx-rwx.' I have not found the data.txt file. Could you tell me where to look or where it is?

 

thx,

Betsy

[TCH-Thomas]

If the instructions from the developer was exactly those, it sounds to me that this data.txt file will be inside the folder that gets created when you unzip the file from him. If he included it, it should be in this folder that he asks you to upload to the server.

 

If not, might mean that you need to create data.txt yourself on your own computer and upload it to the the folder specified by the developer.

 

To do the latter, please

- open notepad

- without typing anything into the notepad, save it as data.txt

- upload it to the folder the developer told you to.

- then set the permission of the file to rwx-rwx-rwx (or 777).

[betsyrc]

Thank you , Thomas.

"If the instructions from the developer was exactly those, it sounds to me that this data.txt file will be inside the folder that gets created when you unzip the file from him. If he included it, it should be in this folder that he asks you to upload to the server." It was there; I was also confused about the permission of the file, where to find that, but he helped and the form is now up.

 

Is there a tutorial here on making - and activating forms?

 

Betsy

Edited September 5, 2009 by betsyrc

[TCH-Bruce]

There is no tutorial on TCH but I am sure you could find one using Google search.