Forms Help

[Tropicana]

Some ISPs no longer support CGI script. If one wants to design a form with check boxes, comment areas, etc. and make it possible for site visitors to fill it in and submit it via e-mail, what options are available and what HTML codes would one use. It might be helpful if you include some links to sites with some examples or templates. Oh and please don't refer to forms created in Front Page.

Thanks.

[Rebycman]

Re: Forms Help

Two words, Get and Post.

I found a tutorial on it here:

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/tut28a.html

-Reby

[Morpheous]

Re: Forms Help

Originally posted by Tropicana:
[qb] Some ISPs no longer support CGI script. If one wants to design a form with check boxes, comment areas, etc. and make it possible for site visitors to fill it in and submit it via e-mail, what options are available and what HTML codes would one use. It might be helpful if you include some links to sites with some examples or templates. Oh and please don't refer to forms created in Front Page.

Thanks. [/qb]

This site is very good with HTML tutorials. I used to use it back in the days when I was a beginner. It deals with vertually anything you want to do in HTML.

The bonus is that this site is very interactive allowing you to try out all the steps in the tutorials right then and there. This site is the best on HTML tutorials on the entire internet!!

Form Tutorials

Home page

[Rebycman]

Re: Forms Help

The form is the easy part. After you have the form you need to talk to your host to determine what they support. There are a variety of ways to send the data from your form which is why you need to find out what your host uses/supports.

Personally I use asp pages and a COM component to take the data from the form and push it off to my mail server. This is the tricky part for most but before we get to that...First ya gotta get the html form in order.

Remove the period in the open/close word form, this forum wont let me use the html form tag

Here is the sample form:

<.form name="Email-1" action="/scripts/script-name.asp" method="post">
<p align="left">Enter Email addy here <br>
<input type="text" name="Email-1" size="20"><br>
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
<input type="reset" name="Submit2" value="Reset">
</p>
</.form>


Below is the scripting I use to pick up the above html form data (called Email-1) from an .asp webpage and send it via email to subscribe to a newsletter.

note - I had to remove the asp open/close script code since this forum wont let me post it - this script is located /scripts/script-name.asp on the server which is called from the above form


sendTo = "[email protected]" email addy you want form data sent to, I use my list server addy that I want them to subscribe to
From = request.form("Email-1") The name of the html form field you want to pull data from
Dim objNewMail
Set objNewMail = Server.CreateObject("MEMail.Message") This is what you need to find out what your host supports so you can send it as an email
objNewMail.Server = "127.0.0.1" Host's mail server IP address, for now its set to localhost
objNewMail.MailTo= sendTo Pulls above script sendto addy and fills it in
objNewMail.MailFrom= From This pulls the form data, in this case I asked them to enter their email addy to auto subscribe to my mailing list
objNewMail.Subject = "Subscribe" This puts the word Subscribe in the subject which tells my server to add the email addy I pulled above to the mailing list
objNewMail.MessageBody = "Subscribe" & vbcrlf&_
"Email: " & ESmail & vbcrlf&_
objNewMail.SendMessage
Response.redirect("http://www.domain.com/filename.html")if everything worked it displays this webpage, usually a thanks for subscribing type page


I've removed my IP and domain names in the above example but you can get the basic idea of the scripting involved. Easy eh? [img]/forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Tropicana]

Re: Forms Help

Is there anything tless technical maybe using post and action. I tried it but all it did was pop up a blank e-mail window. It din't capture the contents of the form.

[Morpheous]

Re: Forms Help

Originally posted by Tropicana:
[qb] Is there anything tless technical maybe using post and action. I tried it but all it did was pop up a blank e-mail window. It din't capture the contents of the form. [/qb]

The simpliest form submission you can have is using post and mailto.

After the mailto: place the email address you want the contents of the filled in form to be sent to.

Example:
form method="post" name="tropicana web page" action="mailto:[email protected]"

This emails the contents of the form your visitors fills in to your email address. The problem with this approach however is that what arrives in your inbox is quite messy.

It is better to use Perl, ASP or PHP to process/validate the form on the server side and use Javascript to validate the form on the client side. Personally I use Javascript, Perl and PHP.

This may be a bit beyond your knowldedge at the moment but sooner or later you will have to choose either method to process your forms. It will be better for you in the long run. I suggest learning ASP because it's the most easiest of the lot to learn and if you know Visual Basic which is also very easy to comprehend then you are home free.

There is so much to consider with form submissions including hidden form fields etc.

It is strange that your ISP does not support CGI??? Do they support PHP or ASP. If they don't then fling whey dat deh ISP cause dem a rubbish.

[Rebycman]

Re: Forms Help

You can try a simple mailto: html action command. I've never tried this particular method but it should work. The nice thing is you don't have to know anything about email servers since it uses the client's email client.

Anyway, try this:

http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/HTML/Forms/mailto.html

-Reby

[Rebycman]

Re: Forms Help

oops, Morpheous beat me to it lol.

He's absolutly right. This really isnt an ideal way to handle the form data. Spam bots can read the email addy you plugged into the mailto: and harvest the addy. That's why I like the scripting, it pulls that data from the script which the spam bots cant read.

Lots of ways to do it but they can be a bit complicated to sort out and understand the logic at first. Keep at it, you will get there.

-Reby

[Tropicana]

Re: Forms Help

I used to use the action post mailto but since they stopped supporting CGI script, all people get is an error message.

Thank you both and I think you're right, I might seriously have to look at changing ISPs or hosts if they don't provide the functionality that I need.

[ohliz]

Re: Forms Help

form action="mailto:[email protected]"> doesn't work on a lot of browsers.

To design a form that works consistently you need to have access to some kind of scripting language, ASP, Perl, Cold Fusion - SOMETHING.

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Forms Help

I use to subscribe to this ,when i was into webpages. I have not used them for years,but they were very useful then.

http://webdeveloper.earthweb.com/webjs/