Dreamweaver - email forms question

Author

email forms question

dprulhiere

2004-08-07, 7:15 pm

I have been poking around abit and found that there is many ways to send the
contents of a form via email. I tried .. ACTION="mailto:myemailaddress" and
this works, um shall i say ok. the data get to me but unless i a mistaken,
there is a lot of problems with this method.
1. you have to have an email client on the computer that is trying to complete
the form.
2. if you don't click the send mail button on your email client, the email
wont get sent. which could result in a client thinking they were neglected
because they got no immediate response.
3.this warning comes out and says that this form is being sent by email ...
could be virus, do you want to continue? (this is if the email client is
Outlook, not sure of the others) I have clients that are so afraid of
viruses(virisi??) that they would cancel just to make sure.

There may be other problems but this is enough for me to know there must be
other ways.
The only other ways I have seen is using CDONTS or a CGI...I am not really
sure how to do this.

Could someone point me in the right direction on how to send form contents in
an email?

thank you

David

mr nelson

2004-08-07, 7:15 pm

I'm sure more knowledgeable lurkers can answer this better than I, but since I
have just finished learning this and doing it myself, here's my answer. You
need to embed a script (I used PHP because it's supported by my web host's
server) in your html where your form is. The PHP script will parse the entries
someone enters into your form and do with them what you tell it to. I got some
starter PHP scripts from my host, but you need to learn some php. It won't take
a lot to get your form to do some simple things, and some library books on php
help a lot.

dprulhiere

2004-08-07, 7:15 pm

My questions keep on coming...

do i want a book on PHP or CGI. The server platform is Windows. Any reccomendations for for a title

david

Michael Fesser

2004-08-07, 7:15 pm

.oO(dprulhiere)

>My questions keep on coming...
>
>do i want a book on PHP or CGI.

Both are completely different things. CGI is not a specific language,
it's a technique for client-server communication in the web. Every
program can run as CGI, even PHP scripts.

> The server platform is Windows.

Use PHP or ASP, dependent on the used webserver (the most common
configurations are Apache/PHP and IIS/ASP).

Micha