Another question about forms

[sidewinder]

Hello,

New person here :)

I've been doing web design for a while now, but have never been asked to create a form until now. We have an old form that has been used on one of our sites for years that a previous employee created. The person who created it had very little web design experience, and I know for a fact that he knew nothing about cgi programming, and yet his form still works to this day.

I never would have imagined that building a simple form and having the results sent to an email address would be such a complicated matter. Am i missing something here? Do i really need to learn cgi programming in order to do such a thing? Or have to have it sent through some type of service for $19 a month (such as is described here: http://www.response-o-matic.com/ )?

My real confusion stems from the fact that this form works:

http://www.electrosales.net/dealer_a...pplication.htm

It is a very basic form put together by someone who had little web design experience (but who is no longer around to ask how he did it), yet which works on its own without haveing to send it out to some "response-o-matic" type of service

Again, am I missing something???

Thank you much!

[sands]

Do i really need to learn cgi programming in order to do such a thing?

Would be a good idea to learn the basics at least, especially if you are into web-design. I personally feel it is better to use PHP and there are many free PHP scripts that can be used for forms. One place to check is:
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complet...rm_Processing/
Here many scripts are free and can be handled by beginners.

[chebyrashka]

It all depends on the server you are on. There are plenty of off the shelf ASP,PHP, CFM etc templates out there to do the trick. But really unless if you are planning on doing a lot of programming or work with this type of thing, you would be better off just finding someone who could set it up for you.

[powersitedesign]

Don't get discouraged, forms can be frustrating to say the least. Here is a link to an industry standard that I have used for a long time and had good results:

http://phpformgen.sourceforge.net/

The only thing to keep in mind w/ using a form generator like this is that you have to make sure to end your page file that you create w/ .php or it won't work and will display jibberish if you try to call the functions in using plain .html. It is possible though to use the .php inside of html pages but it is tricky if you aren't experienced. One thing also to consider is that in the past year or so a number of spammers have been exploiting a lot of .php forms and using them in some fashion to broadcast their spam to others. There really isn't a good way that I have found to combat this so, my firm purchased a solution called form-processor pro from a company called Mitridat. Their support is almost comical, but the product itself is pretty robust and instead of using php in the page to send the form, it is an application that uses coding to call in the form properties and making it harder for hackers to abuse them. (or at least that has been our experience with it).

The Mitridat solution is not a free app, but might be worth considering should you have more calls for forms in the future, here is a link to the Mitridat website, hope this helps:

http://www.mitridat.com/products-for...essor-pro.html

And, an online demo can be found here: http://www.email-form.com/online-demo.html

Hope this helps. I will also be watching to see if others might have a form solution / generator that they recommend.

[RegDCP]

If you are going to use a cgi script, be sure to name it with a nonsense name. EG: ql9uss0oql5v.cgi
Hackers like to find things like formmail.cgi and use them as spam relays.

Reg

[DrTandem1]

PHP is (IMHO) a better choice. You still need to be sure that the script strips HTML tags and does not allow new lines to be entered in a way that would allow them to launch an email using the Cc function from your site.

[RegDCP]

I agree. PHP is a much better option.
It can be intimidating though.

Reg

[nkycomputers]

The form program I use is phorm jr. It is easy to learn and has a lot of features. It sends you the form and also gives the user a confirmation page. If you need more there is a full version called phorm. You can download for free at http://www.phorm.com/jr.php
If you have any questions on how to use it I would be happy to help you.

Remember this program is free so the only drawback is a link back to their site at the bottom of the acknowledgement page.

[dmedia]

I used to do all my dynamic stuff in PERL (cgi) .. then about 2 years ago began coding in PHP .. I love it. Grabbing an off the shelf form PHP script can be a good way to introduce yourself to the language .. if youve ever craved some additional programming skills

[sdrury]

Why not try the beta service at http://www.fastcontact.com until you get the idea of PHP ?

[eddster]

There are a couple of ways of doing this.
It depends on what you have on your server.

If you can run .asp then you may be able to use the jmail or Cdonts components (if installed, check with your hosting company). If not then .cgi or .php is fine.

It's not as complicated as it at first seems, though can seem confusing first time round.

If you'd like some direct help, please feel free to drop us a line.

[TrafficProducer]

MS FrontPage??

I belive MS FrontPage can handle forms, if you have FrontPage extension turned on server end. You may also have to Upload the site via MS FrontPage publish option.

Other applications should also be able handle forms, Dreamweaver, etc..

I don't use this, I use PERL, or PHP, etc to handle form data.

[sidewinder]

wow. thank you for all the responses! i've never recieved so much help from a web design forum before

i'll be looking into your advice(s) very soon

[fishhead011]

FrontPage does forms very easily...and b'gob, they work!
Mary

[Webnauts]

If you are concerned in buidling accessible forms, download this FREE tool: http://www.hisoftware.com/access/valueadd9.html

[budneyc]

Hello,

I have always used frontpage 2002 for my forms and they work, but I always have been confused about something....When looking under "Reports" in Frontpage, it shows there is a broken hyperlink on all the pages that have forms. Has anyone else seen this? Will this cause SE ranking problems?

Thanks!!

[Webnauts]

Sorry, but are you talking about this page? http://www.electrosales.net/dealer_a...pplication.htm

If yes, the "onSubmit" attribute has an invalid attribute value "". Try using one of the following values: an alphanumeric string or a string.

If you are talking about the page http://resourceindex.com/register/?php the "form" element cannot be used there where it is. It is contained in a "table" tag that cannot contain it. This element may be contained in "body", "dd", "td", and "th". This element may not be contained in "button", "dl", "form", and "table".

[TrafficProducer]

Reports" in Frontpage, it shows there is a broken hyperlink

I don't use Frontpage for forms but in general
Frontpage, and other such applications can produce bloated HTML pages. Adding extra code that the application requires to do the job.

Doing it by hand using say PHP or PERL, (by the way there is plenty of free scripts to use but these would require a Learning Curve some time to implement), would not need this code an can therefore be cleaner, and easier for Search Engines to find. (This is one reason webmasters may not use FrontPage for thsi).

Try a different link checker to see what happens.

FrontPage, requires some sub directory’s to work, these are basically set up using FrontPage Extensions.


FrontPage state, under their Help:-

Mark the pages to publish
You can specify which files you want to publish. By default, files are marked for publishing, but you can change this setting. For example, if you have not finished editing a page but you want to publish your Web site, you can prevent the page from being published by marking it Don't Publish. When you want to publish the file, mark the page Publish.

Certain files should not be published again after you first publish your web. For example, you create a web with a guestbook, and then publish the web. Later, you update your web pages — if you publish all of your files, including the file that records guestbook information, you will save a blank guestbook over the existing one, losing all the information. Other examples include pages with a hit counter; discussion webs; and catalogs (if you are running Index Server).

On the View menu, point to Reports, and then click Publish Status.
The publishing status of all files in the current web is displayed.

Select one or more files, right-click them, click Properties on the shortcut menu, and then click the Workgroup tab.
Do one of the following:
To prevent a file from being published, select the Exclude this file when publishing the rest of the web check box.
To mark a file for publishing, clear the Exclude this file when publishing the rest of the web check box.
Tip You can right-click the page icon from the Folder List in any view, click Properties on the shortcut menu, and then click the Workgroup tab.

I don't, as, others don't use FrontPage so this is just a guide.

[fizzlesquirt]

I recently started a total rework of our website. The existing site uses cgi - and yes, we have had issues with alot of spam.

In my endeavor to find an alternative, I found the following formail script at:
www.scriptsearch.com/cgi-bin/jump.cgi?ID=10139

It can be used in a very basic way, or you can get involved and do custom error pages, autorespond, send form info in HTML format. Very powerful and great documentation.

Now this won't create the form(s), it will process it. But creating forms is fairly easy.

Another alternative I found was at:
www.coffeecup.com/form-builder/
The only thing I didn't like about this one was the fact that the user had to have Flash plugin to be able to fill in a form on your website.

Hope this helps. Let us know how you make out.