webhosting:formmail

There are several options. PHP forms probably give you the most choices. One that's known to work here is the Tectite formmail.

If you only need a simple a form-to-email script, you can use our shared FormMail - a CGI. Information about it is below. You will need to contact us before using this.

Local notes about using FormMail - July 2004

SUMMARY Formmail is a script which allows you to receive the results of an HTML form submission via an email message.

URL The most up to date version of this script is available from the nms script archive at <http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/>

[ installation details removed: it's already installed ]

FORM CONFIGURATION To make use of it, you need to write an HTML form that refers to the FormMail script. Here's an example which will send mail to the address 'feedback@your.domain' when someone submits the form:

<form method="POST" action="/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl">
 <input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="feedback@your.domain" >
 <input type="text" name="feedback" ><br >
 Please enter your comments<br >
 <input type="submit" >
</form>

See how the hidden 'recipient' input in the example above told formmail who to send the mail to ? This is how almost all of formmail's configuration works. Here's the full list of things you can set with hidden form inputs:

recipient - The email address to which the form submission should be sent. If you would like it copied to more than one recipient then you can separate multiple email addresses with commas, for example:

<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="you@your.domain,me@your.domain" />

subject - The subject line for the email. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="subject" value="From the feedback form" />

redirect - If this value is present it should be a URL, and the user will be redirected there after a successful form submission. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.your.domain/foo.html" />

If you don't specify a redirect URL then instead of redirecting formmail will generate a success page telling the user that their submission was successful.

bgcolor - The background color for the success page.

background - The URL of the background image for the success page.

text_color - The text color for the success page.

link_color - The link color for the success page.

vlink_color - The vlink color for the success page.

alink_color - The alink color for the success page.

title - The title for the success page.

return_link_url - The target URL for a link at the end of the success page. This is normally used to provide a link from the success page back to your main page or back to the page with the form on. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="return_link_url" value="/home.html" />

return_link_title - The label for the return link. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="return_link_title" value="Back to my home page" />

sort - This sets the order in which the submitted form inputs will appear in the email and on the success page. It can be the string 'alphabetic' for alphabetic order, or the string “order:” followed by a comma separated list of the input names, for example:

<input type="hidden" name="sort" value="order:name,email,age,comments" />

If “order:” is used you must supply the names of all of the fields that you want to be in the body of the mail message.

print_config - This is mainly used for debugging, and if set it causes formmail to include a dump of the specified configuration settings in the email. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="print_config" value="title,sort" />

… will include whatever values you set for 'title' and 'sort' (if any) in the email.

required - This is a list of fields that the user must fill in before they submit the form. If they leave any of these fields blank then they will be sent back to the form to try again. For example:

<input type="hidden" name="required" value="name,comments" />

missing_fields_redirect - If this is set, it must be a URL, and the user will be redirected there if any of the fields listed in 'required' are left blank. Use this if you want finer control over the the error that the user see's if they miss out a field.

env_report - This is a list of the CGI environment variables that should be included in the email. This is useful for recording things like the IP address of the user in the email. Any environment variables that you want to use in 'env_report' in any of your forms will need to be in the @valid_ENV configuration variable described above.

print_blank_fields - If this is set then fields that the user left blank will be included in the email. Normally, blank fields are suppressed to save space.

As well as all these hidden inputs, there are a couple of non-hidden inputs which get special treatment:

email - If one of the things you're asking the user to fill in is their email address and you call that input 'email', formmail will use it as the address part of the sender's email address in the email.

realname - If one of the things you're asking the user to fill in is their full name and you call that input 'realname', formmail will use it as the name part of the sender's email address in the email.

COMMON PROBLEMS

If you're setting up a new form and when you submit it, get an error message about “add your domain to referers array”, please ask the webmaster to do that. We have to do this kind of tight configuration to prevent FormMail being used by the “people” who send junk mail.

Other questions? Please ask the webmaster.