Hey everyone. I'm new to this forum and new to web design as well and I've been working on my company website lately trying to get it ready for the public. I've done it through html and it looks alright (I guess...) but I'm trying to make something now that I'm completely lost with. If someone could help that would be great. What I need is sort of a form where there are a variety of choices. A customer will go through and select there choices and at the end they will be given an automatic quote. I own a custom screen printing business and basically I want a place on my website where customers can go and pick a shirt type, shirt color, ink color, number of inks, etc and then be given an automatic quote. Please help if you can...thanks. Hopefully you'll understand what I'm saying...
Well you need to hire a programmer/web developer to do this for you... Are you looking to hire or looking to have some sort of arrangement with whoever can make a solution for you?
Sounds like quite a complex task for a beginner, I'd hire someone or try using a template based or other easier solution.
I am afraid that what you want to do cannot be done by simple HTML alone. HTML is for the presentation layer, what you need is logic. You need a developer.
I think you need hire someone brother, your ask is medium task, for beginner, if you need somehelp, you have to keep learning by your self and, I agree with @johns123 post, keep learning is the best one instead hiring someone,
Also ask the developer questions to learn what they are doing and why. That will give you a good foundation to research and learn how to develop yourself.
You could probably accomplish that with JavaScript, or PHP, my suggestion would be to check out some tutorials. The easiest way I see would be to make set values (quotes) for certain combinations (array?) selected by the user and then once completed the value is displayed.
you could build this using simple html then submit the choices from the form to be delivered all as txt to you via e-mail. just google "html forms POST" this should lead you to a simple solution alternatively you should be able to find some scripts to help you online plus if your having problems building the form in raw html tags try using frontpage (with ms office) or a free web editor like Amaya for example.
sorry I misread the OP last night when i posted my response, I didnt realise you needed to show the user an end quote. I used to manage a screen printing business, I always found it difficult to stringently stick to set quote amounts, the market changes often and if you need to tweak the pricing structure then you better off using a back end database driven system as kellyfros suggests however if you wanted to keep it simple you could have a bit of javascript on click of the button which then shows a new page which are parsed values based on a load of if statements!! this is a very crude solution though. However from a business perspective, I would suggest you providing a basic form where the user can submit a request for a quote which will then allow you to assess their needs and contact them back either via the phone or e-mail to provide a more personal quote including possibly upselling higher spec garments. A stringent online system would mean if the user picks one wrong detail they would get mis quoted and you could lose the customer, you would need to contact them to discuss artwork anyway as this may vary the method of printing i.e. water based, plastisol, maybe even screen print and heat press plastisol transfers!!