VirtuaWeb has a pre-installed Form Mailer script that our clients can use. This form
mailing CGI script allows you to have the contents of a form mailed to an e-mail address
that you specify. There are two ways to implement a form in your page.
The first (and easiest) way is to use Microsoft FrontPage. To do this, you must first
have the FrontPage extensions installed on your domain. If you have used FrontPage thus
far to upload your site, you already have the extensions installed. You can simply insert
a new form and specify the e-mail address you want the form mailed to directly in
FrontPage - no CGI required. The server takes care of everything for you.
The second method is best for those who use other HTML editors or those that do HTML
coding by hand. The first item you will need to put in your HTML document is the FORM
specifier, exactly as it appears below:
This tells the browser that everything after that line will be sent to the
form mail script. You next need to define what you want the form to do. The following is
the snipplet from the form mail documentation that specifies your options. Please note
that some of these are required. The ones that are required say so.
Necessary form fields:
There is only one form field that you must have in your form, for FormMail to work
correctly. This is the recipient field.
Field: recipient Description: This form field allows you to specify to whom you wish for your form
results to be mailed. Most likely you will want to configure this option as a hidden form
field with a value equal to that of your e-mail address. Syntax: <input type=hidden name="recipient"
value="email@your.host.com">
Optional form fields:
Field: subject Description: The subject field will allow you to specify the subject that you wish
to appear in the e-mail that is sent to you after this form has been filled out. If you do
not have this option turned on, then the script will default to a message subject: WWW
Form Submission Syntax: If you want to choose the subject:
<input
type=hidden name="subject" value="Your Subject"> If you want to have a form field for subject: <input type=text name="subject">
Field: email Description: This form field will allow the user to specify their return
e-mail address. If you want to be able to return e-mail to your user, I strongly suggest
that you include this form field and allow them to fill it in. This will be put into the
From: field of the message you receive. If you want to require an email address with valid
syntax, add this field name to the 'required' field. Syntax: <input type=text name="email">
Field: realname Description: The realname form field will allow the user to input their
real name. This field is useful for identification purposes and will also be put into the
From: line of your message header. Syntax: <input type=text name="realname">
Field: redirect Description: If you wish to
redirect the user to a different URL, rather than having them see the default response to
the fill-out form, you can use this hidden variable to send them to a pre-made HTML page. Syntax: <input type="hidden" name="redirect"
value="http://www.yourhost.com/">
Field: required Description: You can require for certain fields in your form to be filled
in before the user can successfully submit the form. Simply place all field names that you
want to be mandatory into this field. If the required fields are not filled in, the user
will be notified of what they need to fill in, and a link back to the form they just
submitted will be provided. Syntax: <input type=hidden name="required"
value="email,phone">
Field: env_report Description: Allows you to have Environment variables included in the
e-mail message you receive after a user has filled out your form. Useful if you wish to
know what browser they were using, what domain they were coming from or any other
attributes associated with environment variables. The following is a short list of valid
environment variables that might be useful: REMOTE_HOST - Sends the hostname making a request. REMOTE_ADDR - Sends the IP address of the remote host making the request. HTTP_USER_AGENT - The browser the client is using to send the request. Syntax: <input type=hidden name="env_report"
value="REMOTE_HOST, HTTP_USER_AGENT">
Field: sort Description: This field allows you to choose the order in which
you wish for your variables to appear in the e-mail that FormMail generates. You can
choose to have the field sorted alphabetically or specify a set order in which you want
the fields to appear in your mail message. By leaving this field out, the order will
simply default to the order in which the browsers sends the information to the script
(which is usually the exact same order as they appeared in the form.) When sorting by a
set order of fields, you should include the phrase "order:" as the first part of
your value for the sort field, and then follow that with the field names you want to be
listed in the e-mail message, separated by commas. Version 1.6 allows a little more
flexibility in the listing of ordered fields, in that you can include spaces and line
breaks in the field without it messing up the sort. This is helpful when you have many
form fields and need to insert a line wrap. Syntax: To sort alphabetically: <input type=hidden name="sort"
value="alphabetic"> To sort by a set field order: <input type=hidden name="sort"
value="order:name1,name2, name3,etc...">
Field: print_config Description: print_config allows you to specify which of the config
variables you would like to have printed in your e-mail message. By default, no config
fields are printed to your e-mail. This is because the important form fields, like email,
subject, etc. are included in the header of the message. However some users have asked for
this option so they can have these fields printed in the body of the message. The config
fields that you wish to have printed should be in the value attribute of your input tag
separated by commas. Syntax: If you want to print the email and subject fields in the body
of your message, you would place the following form tag:
<input type=hidden name="print_config" value="email,subject">
Field: missing_fields_redirect Description: This form field allows you to specify a URL that users will
be redirected to if there are fields listed in the required form field that are not filled
in. This is so you can customize an error page instead of displaying the default. Syntax: <input type=hidden name="missing_fields_redirect"
value="http://your.host.com/error.html">
Any other form fields that appear in your script will be mailed back to you and
displayed on the resulting page if you do not have the redirect field set. There is no
limit as to how many other form fields you can use with this form, except the limits
imposed by browsers and your server.
Some of the possible uses of this script are:
1) You want to have a form that will be mailed to you, but aren't sure how to write the
CGI script for it.
2) You are the webmaster of your site and want to allow users to use forms, but not to
have their own cgi-bin directories, which can cause security risks to your system. You can
set this script up and then allow all users to run off of it.
3) Want to have one script to parse all of your html forms and mail them to you.