quick help with form-to-email

felcon · July 22nd, 2007, 08:30 AM

Hi,

I wanted to make a contact page for my website, so i had a look on google and saw lots about a form-to-email type thing (lol).

I had a quick read on it, and i found a basic one that is free to use. I had a try and it looks nice and all, but it doesnt actually sent to my email. I think i know why, but i dont know how to fix it...

The code is:

Code:

<form action="#">
          <p>Below is an example of how it would look:<br /><br /></p>
          <div class="row">
            <span class="formlabel">your name</span>
            <span class="forminput"><input type="text" name="yourname" /></span>
          </div>
          <div class="row">
            <span class="formlabel">your email address</span>
            <span class="forminput"><input type="text" name="youremail" /></span>
          </div>
          <div class="row">
            <span class="formlabel">your enquiry</span>
            <span class="forminput"><textarea rows="5" cols="18" name="yourenquiry" class="textarea"></textarea></span>
          </div>
          <div class="spacer">&nbsp;</div>
          <div class="row">
            <span class="formlabel"></span>
            <span class="forminput"><input type="submit" value="submit" class="submit" /></span>
          </div>
          <p><br /><br />NOTE: A contact form such as this would require some way of emailing the input to a specified email address.</p>
        </form>

Now, do i need to do something with the "<form action="#">" part?

Any help would be great,
Thanks.

1840dsgn · July 22nd, 2007, 08:54 AM

Quote:

<p><br /><br />NOTE: A contact form such as this would require some way of emailing the input to a specified email address.</p>

So the form you've added isn't actually set up to send email...it is just a form!

There are two ways:

Use the mailto: function...

HTML Code:

<form action="mailto:youremailaddresshere">

This way, you will get sent the data they have enetered into the form, however, the user will get no feedback on their submission. They will not get a thank you email, or directed to a thank you page. in fact they will have no way of telling if their form has been submitted or not.

The second way is using PHP.You can do this if you have PHP enabled on your hosting package. Using PHO you can do al sorts of nifty things. You can have the details emailed to you in a format you set, you can send a personalised thank you email to the user once they have submitted the form. You can add validation to check they are inputting a proper email address etc., you can redirect them to a thank you page once they have submitted their data...there is all sorts of things you can do. PHP is definitely the way to go if you can. Search google for tutorials for sending mail or contact forms in PHP. you should find loads of useful resources.

Mike

pa007 · July 22nd, 2007, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Using PHO you can do al sorts of nifty things.

I'm not familiar with PHO, you'll have to fill me in.

What Mike said, plus...

Contact forms using PHP are pretty simple but make sure you have some kind of security on it. Those dratted spam bots get cleverer all the time, though simply by using a form to send email you're enhancing security.

Pete.

1840dsgn · July 22nd, 2007, 11:01 AM

Quote:

I'm not familiar with PHO, you'll have to fill me in.

Lol its my version of PHP...bodged but works! I'm still learning although I've managed to put together a CMS and blog and a booking and stock system...so I'm learning well!

Yea it is true, there are a lot of ways you can add security with PHP, very few on a mailto form, none without using javascript, so if the user has JS disabled there is no validation or security.

On my forms I have a security question at the end, similar to the captcha ones (the random array of letters and numbers you have to retype when filling in forms). My system generates 2 random numbers like one and seven and asks a question like what is randomnum1 plus randomnum2? and the user has to type the answer. The validation then checks whether the answer was correct or not.

Spambots are clever, but they're not as clever as humans and therefore can't read the worded numbers and answer in numeric digits...as far as I know!