Forms

[idge]

Hi all, need some help. I'm Idge and I design for a local charity in Warrington, UK.(http://www.warringtonvb.org.uk) This is my first ever web site and I can't get the form on the 'information' page to come to my inbox as a an email or to my hosts in their web mail facility. I'm using DreamweaverMX 2004 and on the properties panel for the form I've used a mailto action. In my control panel with my host, I've set up the email to be forwarding to my company inbox - with no results. Anyone out there with any ideas. It would be most appreciated.
Thanks, Idge

[ManJonStudios]

Sorry to say, but that's not how it works. I wish it did to. What you need to do is a <form method=post> It does just what it says; it takes the information and posts it to the script you are using.

For Example.

I use CGI/ASP, it's nice it simple, it's fully customizable. so my code reads a little like this:

<form action="http://www.yoursite.com/cgi-bin/yourcgifile.asp" method="post" name="Join Now" id="Join Now">

You would need to have a server that offers you a CGI bin if you are a first time user. It's not hard, just take the time to get into and really teach yourself the in's and out's of how these scripts work.

I started with a cgi-bin in my hosting package that I had no clue what it was for , then I "SAVED AND EXTRA COPY" to play with and started messing with all the coding until I deconstructed the whole thing, now I fly through forms like its no big deal.

Good Luck

[voodooboy]

Idge,
To make things easy on yourself, the best thing to do is contact your hosting provider. They should have available for you a cgi or Perl based script already set-up for use on their servers, and will install it for you in your cgi-bin. They will most likely even give you simple direction on setting up the action="" script portion of your form coding so you can access the cgi script they set up for you.

Some scripts require what are called hidden="" links within your html code that tells the script whom to send the info to and what the subject line and such should be. Other scripts keep all that information wihtin the script to protect you from having your email address lifted by a sniffer.

Either way, your hosting provider will help you get set-up the right way. They know their servers, and know what will and won't work on them. Hit and miss on others suggestions is not the way to go with this kind of thing.

Best of luck.

[ManJonStudios]

All cgi-bin's that I have ever seen have come with full instructions and a simple asp form called sendmail.asp

What I meant by trying different things, is with the look of the asp so that you can fully customize your page.

You have to remember - a first timer is going to use the asp like I did and have that ugly - "Thank You For Your Submission" page, that doesn't go anywhere and makes the visitor think that's it, time to go.

I thought I was getting fancy when i was able to make the form open up a new browser, that way when the visitor got to the "that's it page" they could close it. But that still left them on the form page.

I went through about 25 different tries before I came up with what I like, I now have my forms go to the asp which looks like every other page in the site and it says thank you click here to return to the main page. Nice, clean professional.

That took me many hours of trial and error. So for someone who is first time. I was there and I encourage you to expand your knowledge by learning something new.

Just remember, do it with a back up file and keep the original in tact, in case you have to start all over.

Good Luck

[voodooboy]

ManJon,
But isn't sendmail.asp for Windows based servers? I didn't read anywhere in Idge's post what kind of server he is hosted on. Instead of giving him ideas that may or may not work on his hosting server, I simply directed him to those that would know, without doubt, how he should set his application up.

I wasn't saying you were wrong. I was just helping the person get to the right information the quickest way possible. I am sure you know what you are talking about, but I don't believe we got enough information from Idge to give him a difinitive answer to fix the problem he is having.

I am sure he appreciates your efforts though, as do I.

[Pilfo]

Hi Idge,

It must be the part of the World/Country/County that we come from (myself, just down the M62...Liverpool)

I am also new to creating forms, and teaching myself Web Design using Dreamweaver. I have just today created a form in Dreamweaver, and am having exactly the same problem. Looks like we need a cgi-bin. Will we have to pay more Council Tax for that?

Please let me know if you sort it out, and I will do likewise.

Best regards

Pilfo

[arvana]

In case your host doesn't come through for you, NMS has some high-quality free scripts that you can copy to your cgi-bin, and with minimal setup get your form to work. Instructions are included.

You will want their FormMail script, but for maximum security you should give it a different name than FormMail.cgi when you upload it.

http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/


Here's an example of how your form code might look:

<form action="http://yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/FormMail.cgi" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="you@domain.com">
<input type="hidden" name="subject" value="Results from my form">
<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://yourdomain.com/after-submission-page.html">
<input type="hidden" name="required" value="realname,email,phone">
....
your form fields
....
</form>


Hope this helps!

[webmaster80]

Before you can setup your form to send email, check with your hosting company what email objects their web server has installed and support eg. aspmail, cdont mail, etc.

After knowing the mail object (server based), then look for free scripts in the same language you are using, to send mail using the support object.

Larry Chang,
Newlook Marketing
www.newlook.com.sg

[Biffy]

You can send a simple email just from a form:

<form method="post" enctype="text/plain" action="mailto:me@me.com?subject=I have mail!">
<input type="text" value="blah blah" />
</form>

but it would be worth your while looking into a more flexible solution like PERL, PHP, ASP etc.

[rsadik]

<form name="anyname" method="POST" enctype="text/plain" action="mailto:any@domain.com">
<input type="hidden" name="subject" value="anyname">

This method is good for beginner as you need no script, as I have used it before. It is a simple form to get your email in your inbox, guaranteed. If you would like a thank you page appear after the user click send form, then you would need a script.
There are lots of free scripts at www.scriptarchive.com
Good luck,
rsadik
http://www.arrowtravel.com
http://www.eldertravelclub.com - site still under construction.

[voodooboy]

The problem with the two above listed options is that they both require the USERS mail client application to work. This can have severe adverse effects on the way people look at your company. This is the option for a personal site, not a business site.

Keep that in mind. How do you want your viewers to feel about you? Unprofessional or professional?

[alienzhavelanded]

From the Dreamweaver help file: (Items relating to the subject are in bold)

Attaching custom scripts to HTML form buttons
Some forms use JavaScript or VBScript to perform form processing or some other action on the client as opposed to sending the form data to the server for processing. You can use Dreamweaver to configure a form button to run a specific client-side script when the user clicks the button.

Note: This feature does not work with ASP.NET forms.

To run a script on the client:
Select a Submit button in a form.
In the Behaviors panel (Window > Behaviors), click the Plus (+) button and select Call JavaScript from the list.
For more information on this behavior, see Call JavaScript.

In the Call JavaScript text box that appears, enter the name of the JavaScript function you want to run when the user clicks the button, and click OK.
For example, you can enter the name of a function that doesn’t exist yet, such as processMyForm().

If your JavaScript function doesn’t exist in the head section of the document yet, add it now.

For example, you could define the following JavaScript function in the head section of the document to display a message when the user clicks the Submit button.

function processMyForm(){
alert('Thanks for your order!');
}

In addition, FrontPage users have it even easier if theyre working with a FrontPage web using FP 2002 with Server Extensions and/or FP 2k3 with Sharepoint/Extensions. A nice benefit of 2k3/Sharepoint is the ability to save your form results as XML as well ;)

You simply create your form, then right click anywhere in the form> choose Form Properties>Under "Where to Store Results" , fill in the Email Address: field.

The Advanced button offers a few more options for processing as well. Hope this helps. FP haters should check out 2k3, btw...HUGE improvement.

Happy coding,
The Martian

[Pilfo]

This is part of what my hosting company sent me, but now I am even more confused by this, along with all of your comments.

1. The first line of Perl (we have version 5.0005) in your code needs to
be: #!/usr/bin/perl --

2. Usually cgi/perl scripts can be placed anywhere under /web. On older
hosting packages, you may need to place your cgi-bin after
/web/yourftpusername/. For ease of admin, you can create a folder called
cgi-bin.

3. The path to sendmail is: /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t

4. If you are calling the absolute path to a file in your coding, you
need to
know that the absolute path to the root of your webspace is:

/home/sites/www.yourdomain/

If incorporating this into your coding, remember that you do include
include
the /web/. Therefore /home/sites/www.yourdomain/web/ftpusername/cgi-bin

5. All .cgi / .pl files need to have file permissions set to 755 or 775.

6. If calling a file through the internet, remember you need to omit the
/web/ directory from the reference. e.g. to reference a cgi file through
the internet, if your cgi-bin is located at /web/ftpusername/cgi-bin,
you would browse:

http://www.domainname.com/ftpusername/cgi-bin/file.cgi

What on Earth am I supposed to do with the above? I am using Dreamweaver.

Kind regards
Pilfo

[voodooboy]

Pilfo,
First off let me tell you. Habing Dreamweaver is not all you need to set-up and run a site. Dreamweaver is great for site development, but there are other things that make dynamic actions (like forms) within sites work. You can't always do everything with one application.

What your provider is telling you is that they don't readily offer you scripts. You can get a form script from here:
http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html

FormMail.pl is a mail script that you put into your cgi-bin which your form calls to process the information put into the fields. When someone clicks on the submit button, the form code on your html page calls the formmail script which compiles the information and sends it to the mail server to send to you.

When you download the script, open it in WordPad. The first line will be this line:
#!/usr/bin/perl
This is your path to the Perl application that allows Perl scripting to run on your server.

You will have to make some other script adjustments which are all in the top section of the FormMail script. One will be your path to the mail server which is this line:
/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t
I believe default in the script you downloaded is ( /usr/lib/sendmail -i -t ) so you will have to change this. You also need to set your referrers and your recipients in the script. If you need help, just read the set-up page on the site above. This page also has the information you need to set-up the html form properly so it can call the script to send the info, make certain fields required, redirect after the field is filled out, etc.

When you load the script into your cgi-bin folder, you have the option to set specific permissions for the script. These permissions tell the server who can access the script and what they can do with it.

I personally use Dreamweaver but not for uploading files and changing permissions. For this I use CuteFTP. It is a free download you can get from downloads.com It has simple directions on uploading and setting permissions.

If you still have problems let us know.

[Pilfo]

Hi Scott,

Many thanks for your help. I have made the neccessary changes to the FormMail script...but now I get the following error message:-

CGIWrap encountered an error while attempting to execute this script:

Error Message: Permission denied
Error Number: 13
This message usually indicates there is a problem with the script itself. Often this indicates either that the #! line of the script is incorrect, or the script was uploaded in binary mode instead of ascii mode. Check to make sure that the script does not have control-M's at the end of every line. That will prevent it from executing. An easy fix that takes care of this most of the time is to put '#!/.../perl --' instead of '#!/.../perl' on the first line of the script. This is typically a problem if the script was edited or uploaded from a DOS/Windows/Macintosh station to a unix based server.
If you are not the owner of this script, please forward this error and the URL that caused it to the script owner. That is often the component in the URL right after /cgiwrap/.

I have checked the script as above, and altered '#!/.../perl' to '#!/.../perl--' as that is what my hosting server recommends anyway.

I used notepad as I don't have wordpad. Could it be that I have not uploaded in ascii mode? How do I do that?

Best regards
Pilfo

[voodooboy]

That is interesting. I use that script all the time and have never that that happen. I would verify that the mail server path is correct, and adjust the perl path to match what your provider gave you.

Most applications have three options in uploading, Binary, ASCII, or autoselect. (where in the application makes the choice.) You should be able to set it to only upload in ASCII. Reload, then verify that the permissons are correct.

Maybe someone else has had a similar problem. You could also contact Matt, the script designer, he is pretty good about giving feedback regarding issues like this.