Forms

[Salamander]

Have a friend who is building site using Frontpage.

Before anyone slates it, it works very well as a site building tool but there is a problem.

Due to the host the frontpage extensions keep getting FUBAR, so he is looking for an alternative to Fronpage extensions for making Forms.

OK we have all heard about PHP, mySQL etc etc and although these may seem good, it takes a while to learn the stuff and then do the creation.

Here is the request.

Is there a simple, freely available, script that will help to create a form with various fields, not too complicated, that can be put into a webpage and, when submitted, will send the e-mail but NOT fire up the users e-mail client.

Is the e-mailing really a server sided issue ?

Any ideas on this subject will be greatly appreciated.

Cheers all

Salamander

[ResaleBroker]

Here are a few links to information on PHP Mail Forms (http://seobulletin.com/blog/php-mail-forms).

[kyle422]

I use this interface to make php forms
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=45605&package_id=122227

[flawebworks]

Go get natemail - http://mindpalette.com
It's great; has a great tutorial as well.

[davedx]

Is there a simple, freely available, script that will help to create a form with various fields, not too complicated, that can be put into a webpage and, when submitted, will send the e-mail but NOT fire up the users e-mail client.

Is the e-mailing really a server sided issue ?

Yes, I'm afraid it is. The reason you can't avoid firing up the mail client is because the typical user isn't running a mail server on their machine, so the form mail process has to get them to connect to their ISP/mail provider's mail server, and to do that you have to go through their client (which has the server, account info etc).

The other way of doing it is server-side, in which case you're using the mail server running on your web server machine (or near enough). It really isn't difficult to set up a form to send email though - take a look at some of those links :)

[DarrenC]

We used to use the forum scripts from our hosting company, but have since developed our own PHP scripts. The hosting company is webfusion.co.uk if your looking for an easier option.

[howardroark]

hotscripts.com + search php email
hotscripts.com + search php contact form
sitescripts.com + ...so on

[dirvish]

If php isn't on the server check for perl, http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html