Simple Contact Form

[jme574]

My son is wanting to put a contact form on his website where he can put in his own questions for people to fill out and have the form emailed back to his email addy. I have tried a few of the free contact form gens. without much luck. They seem easy enough but when we set it up on his site we have had 2 different problems.

 

1. first gen we used the form would not send the form to his email box

2. Second one we tried we input all the fields he wanted on his form but when the email was sent, it still had the default fields instead of the ones he created. Is there anyone that can or would make a contact form for him?

 

 

Thanks

[TCH-Bruce]

What form to email script are you using?

[TCH-Don]

Have you tried Dodosmail?

it comes with a sample test form, just edit the 2nd line of dodosmail.php to change to your e-mail adddress, and your are set, then modify the test form the way you want.

[Samrc]

Forms have 3 main parts.

1) processing code-start the form (says who/where the form is processed)

2) fields for input (some may be required, etc)

3) submit button-end of form (can have other name on it - yours says send details)

 

For this discussion, let's come back to #1 later.

 

#2 contains fairly generic pieces of code that can be used by just about any form processor. The fields I have defined below are name, address, comment and heardabout. You can put them in tables, or directly on the page, etc to fit your design need.

 

>Do not put <FORM></FORM> in front/behind each field as you have done with your current form.  You start the form with code in #1 and it is ended with code in #3.

Simple text entry:
 <input type="Text" name="name" size="60" maxlength="60">

This one allows more input by the user than the field size visible: 
 <input type="Text" name="address" size="60" maxlength="200">

Simple comment/message entry:  
 <textarea name="comment" cols="52" rows="10" wrap="VIRTUAL">

Simple dropdown choice:
 <SELECT NAME="Heard" SIZE=1>
      <option value=heardabout selected>PLEASE CHOOSE ONE
      <option value=Google>Google
      <option value=Othersearch>Other Search Engine
      <option value=TCHforum>TCH Forum
      <option value=Other>Some other way
 </SELECT>

 

#3 can be as simple as:

><INPUT TYPE="button" name="printMe" onClick="print()" value="Print Page">
<INPUT TYPE="submit" value="Send" name="tlx_send">   
<INPUT TYPE="reset">
</form>

 

#1 is the tricky part. You must have a way to send/push your form contents from your site to email receipient. You can do this in several ways.

 

A. Use a 3rd party site to forward your form content. In this case you would not have to have a script on your site that you maintain or install to process the form. You sign up with a form processor, define the fields you want (name , address, etc) and they provide the processing code. Place it at the top of your form, before any fields you want. Remember the fields you defined at the processor must match the fields you build on your web page or you will get crud for an email!

 

One such processor is http://www.cutandpastescripts.com The code below was generated by CutandPaste (posted here as example but tweaked so it is not be valid!)

 

><!- Form Processing, by Cut and Paste Scripts.  Hosted CGI, with NO adverts and FREE.  http://www.cutandpastescripts.com -!><form method=POST action="http://www.cutandpastescripts.com/cgi-bin/formprocessing/forms.pl"><input type=hidden name="activenumber" value="123456789012"><input type="hidden" name="username" value="MikeP"><!-- INSERT YOUR NORMAL FORM FIELDS HERE --><!- Cut and Paste Scripts 2000 -!>

 

 

B. Use a script you install on your own site to process your forms. More setup time! But you are not dependent on another site to process for you.

- You can not use FORM MAIL or any of the clones of FORM MAIL to process your emails here at TCH. The scripts have major security flaws.

- You can use other PHP or CGI scripts to process your form. Consider:

dodosmail (http://regretless.com/scripts/scripts.php#dodosmail)

phormjr (http://www.phorm.com/jr.php3) or

Ultimate form mail (http://www.surefirewebdesign.com/scripts/)

 

-Samantha

[jme574]

the first script was a php script and for some reason it wouldn't send the form and the second was a perl script, it would send but the fields that we had setup was changed back to the default fields that we had changed when we recieved the email. I have tried to find that gen. again but forgot to bookmark it.

[jme574]

found it - this is the one we tried to use.

http://www.tele-pro.co.uk/scripts/contact%5Fform/