question about forms

He has: 1 posts

Joined: Jan 2005

Does anyone know how to make an html form automatically e-mail the results to a specified address?

Greg K's picture

He has: 2,145 posts

Joined: Nov 2003

if you have access to PHP or ASP, you can use some scripts taht are out there to sendthe mail from your server. If youdon't have either of these, I *think* although really not recommended, you can have the form do a mailto: which will launch the visitors mail client to send the information. (been a while since I have seen this used). I would say only use this if it is a like for people you know to use to e-mail you, not for anything you want to look professional.

I think there are also some services out there that will let you use thier servers to send mail, either for paying or for advertising. The best route though overall is to have the script on your server. If you are using a hosting company I would check with them as they proabably already have one set up you can use.

-Greg

JeevesBond's picture

He has: 3,956 posts

Joined: Jun 2002

Greg is correct, typically there'll be something in your hosts documentation (often found on the control panel) regarding a mailing script. If they support PERL the most widely-used script is: http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html

Often a host will provide this for you (try looking for a cgi-bin folder), installing it yourself is a little more difficult of course, if you get stuck let us know Smiling

a Padded Cell our articles site!

He has: 1,758 posts

Joined: Jul 2002

Of course.. if your hosts can't or won't provide perl, php or asp access you can always use a remotely hosted service like one of the ones featured here:

http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Remotely_Hosted/Form_Processing/

Andy

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