Trouble with forms

[DarrenPWS]

Hi all,
I have two questions:

1.)
I have been using forms on my sites for months now, but today, when I tryed submitting one as a test, my outlook express account opened instead, just as a blank "new email".
I don't know what has caused this, it was working fine yesterday..?

2.)
Can anyone tell me how to redirect the user to a "thank you for submitting" page after they have clicked submit... I'm sure it is a failry simple task, but have little idea how to achieve it.

Please contact me for more information...
Thanks a lot

Darren

[DarrenPWS]

Also guys and gals...

The problem I am having with sending forms occurs on both of my PCs/ -

Anyway, please try sending it for me so I can establish whether it is a problem this end, or the whole pages...

http://www.positive-websolutions.co....ct/emailus.htm

Just send a pointless email to me,
Thanks

Darren

[masterpeace]

Well I tried your form (which did not work as you had indicated) and then had a look at the code for it.

I don't profess to be a script pro, but the form "action="mailto:design@positive-websolutions.co.uk" was something I had never seen before. My understanding is that form require a perl or cgi script for processing and I assumed a link like the one in your form would not work. I hope someone corrects me if I am wrong on that.

I use a couple of free form precessing scripts depending on what the form is for. My hosting setup has Matt's formmail set up and ready to go on the server, but I have also used Soupermail (which took me a bit longer to configure and work out but was handy for a particular job I worked on). Both allow you to forward the visitor to a thank you page after the formis submited.

I hope it help a bit... at least you know it is not just you computers!

[DarrenPWS]

Thanks Masterpeace.

I will seek advice from somewhere.

Thanks also for the links, much appreciated, I will have a closer look at them shortly..

Thanks again.
Darren

[DarrenPWS]

My brother and my father-in-law managed to send the forms through just now... This is really weird.

DD

[paulhiles]

Hi Darren,

this topic crops up on a regular basis in Web Programming posts. I've come across many sites that start off by using the mailto command for their form results to be mailed. However this method is most unreliable, it also relies on the user having an email client installed on their machine. So if they were using a PC in a public building like a library they would be unable to use the facility.

Masterpeace mentioned the formmail script, popularised by Matt's Script archive. This is a good start for you providing your host allows CGI script to run on the server. Some hosts provide their own equivalent of the script that can be safely used on your site with minimal customisation required.

If you're able to run ASP or PHP scripts on your site you may even be tempted to construct your own mailer script.. let me know if you need any further help.

Paul

[Jurgen]

Try this one with a form. You must have FormMail (cgi) runnin on your server.

<form action="http://www.yoursite.com/cgi/FormMail.cgi" method="Post"><input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="name@yoursite.com"><input type="hidden" name="subject" value="Request Form"><input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.yoursite.com/thankyoupage.html">

<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Send"> <input type="reset" name="reset" value=" Clear "></form>

Jurgen

www.absolutelyfabulousflowers.com

[spice]

Everything said above is true. In addition, using a mailer script is the only way you can achieve the redirect to "thank you" page you asked about.

The single BEST mailer script I've ever seen is Phorm, a PHP open-source form handler that does just about everything. But writing a basic one that just sends email and redirects the user is incredibly simple in most server-side languages... provided you have access to those.