need form help on my new website.

Joebob · 20 Dec 2008 at 12:49

Hi,

I have set myself a task of getting my new website completely up and running by the new year, but I'm having a little trouble getting a form to work correctly.

Ideally I want the form to submit the info entered and send on to a specified email address but I don't want it to have to open the users email client to do so.

here's the template for the site so far.

http://www.pitmancoventry.co.uk/neweb/

Any help or advice on how to get the form working properly would be very much appreciated

Thanks

Joebob

swinnie · 20 Dec 2008 at 13:24

Firstly, nice site. However...

When rendering in Firefox, your 'Submit' button renders on your border line.

Also, something with your form, you could use a drop down box, so instead of the user typing in the course, they can simply choose from the list.

Do you have PHP on your web server?

Joebob · 20 Dec 2008 at 13:29

Yeah I know about the problem with the submit button. Looks even worse in Chrome and Safari, but I intend to tweak that a little later.

The web server is my own server at work. It isn't setup for PHP as far as I'm aware but I suppose we could do if we wanted to - although I wouldn't know what I would need to do myself, but I know a man who can

swinnie · 20 Dec 2008 at 13:34

What OS is the web server running?

knowledge123 · 20 Dec 2008 at 14:16

Yep, if possible, php would be the quickest and easiest way to do it

A good guide is here.

FFX renders the code with an empty div, or too big a div (double height) if you could put 'id="testdiv", inside the div so it says:
<td><div align="center" id="testdiv">
<input type="submit" name="SUBMIT" id="SUBMIT" value="Submit" />
</div></td>

it makes it easier to see (in firefox web dev toolbar) how it renders the div.

There's a line that says <table width="92%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
You could put 'height=""' into there, with a value inside the "s, may require a play around.

swinnie · 20 Dec 2008 at 14:35

Also, I find using Opera to render my websites first makes things easier. If it doesn't display in Opera properly, its going to look worse in others.

Joebob · 20 Dec 2008 at 16:15

swinnie said:
What OS is the web server running?

Windows Server 2003 32bit. I will get it PHP enabled on Monday.

knowledge123 said:
Yep, if possible, php would be the quickest and easiest way to do it
A good guide is here.

FFX renders the code with an empty div, or too big a div (double height) if you could put 'id="testdiv", inside the div so it says:
<td><div align="center" id="testdiv">
<input type="submit" name="SUBMIT" id="SUBMIT" value="Submit" />
</div></td>

it makes it easier to see (in firefox web dev toolbar) how it renders the div.

There's a line that says <table width="92%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
You could put 'height=""' into there, with a value inside the "s, may require a play around.

Excellent, I will have a play thanks. I used to be a web designer by trade (well for about a year anyway) but that was about 8 years ago so I'm a little out of touch.

swinnie said:
Also, I find using Opera to render my websites first makes things easier. If it doesn't display in Opera properly, its going to look worse in others.

I never thought about Opera - downloading now, cheers.

Joebob · 22 Dec 2008 at 11:18

I have another question I'm hoping to get some help with.

I want to include a box for people to put their email address if they want a e-brochure sending to them. After submitting though I want to know if it's possible to generate an auto replay email with said pdf brochure attached?

Sagalout · 22 Dec 2008 at 11:28

Yeah, its easy enough, but again, you need PHP installed.

knowledge123 · 22 Dec 2008 at 11:32

Joebob said:
I have another question I'm hoping to get some help with.

I want to include a box for people to put their email address if they want a e-brochure sending to them. After submitting though I want to know if it's possible to generate an auto replay email with said pdf brochure attached?

Attached ? I don't think so.... *ponders* An email with a link to it would work; an auto reply to the users email is easy:

$email_from = users-email-address;
$email_address = your-site-email-address;
$message = "thank you for your enquiry blah blah blah";
mail($email_from, "Form", $message, "From: ". $email_address);

edit: ahh, I was wrong

tell me how!

Sagalout · 22 Dec 2008 at 11:49

Using codeigniter:

Code:

$this->load->library('email');
$this->email->from('[email protected]', 'Your Name');
$this->email->to('[email protected]');
$this->email->cc('[email protected]');
$this->email->bcc('[email protected]');
$this->email->attach('/path/to/file');
$this->email->subject('Email Test');
$this->email->message('Testing the email class.');
$this->email->send();

Of course there are other ways, and you could write a script yourself, but I pretty much use CI exclusively now, for the amount of development time it saves.

knowledge123 · 22 Dec 2008 at 12:21

That's very cool, thanks.

HungryHippos · 22 Dec 2008 at 21:38

hmm this could be your problem:

<form id="Enquiry" name="Enquiry" method="post" action="mailto:[email protected]">

I think you want the "action" to be a page that contains the code that handles the email to be sent.

Also it's perfectly possible to use ASP formmail to send an email if you are running on a windows server environment, a guide for setting this up is here:

http://www.brainjar.com/asp/formmail/

A lot of people probably just prefer PHP here for coding

suarve · 23 Dec 2008 at 16:13

Eulogy said:
hmm this could be your problem:

<form id="Enquiry" name="Enquiry" method="post" action="mailto:[email protected]">

I think you want the "action" to be a page that contains the code that handles the email to be sent.

Also it's perfectly possible to use ASP formmail to send an email if you are running on a windows server environment, a guide for setting this up is here:

http://www.brainjar.com/asp/formmail/

A lot of people probably just prefer PHP here for coding

That's a bit of naff way of sending an email with ASP (using loads of hidden fields).

Talbs13 · 23 Dec 2008 at 19:16

Sagalout said:
Using codeigniter:

Code:

$this->load->library('email'); $this->email->from('[email protected]', 'Your Name'); $this->email->to('[email protected]'); $this->email->cc('[email protected]'); $this->email->bcc('[email protected]'); $this->email->attach('/path/to/file'); $this->email->subject('Email Test'); $this->email->message('Testing the email class.'); $this->email->send();

Of course there are other ways, and you could write a script yourself, but I pretty much use CI exclusively now, for the amount of development time it saves.

Sorry to hijack thread. Could you explain what it does? I guess you have to install it on the server? (Stupid question).

Is it like OOP?

suarve · 23 Dec 2008 at 21:09

Talbs13 said:
Sorry to hijack thread. Could you explain what it does? I guess you have to install it on the server? (Stupid question).

Is it like OOP?

Yer kinda. Its a web dev framework. The idea is you can use premade objects and classes to speed up making your php applications, as opposed to writing them from a blank page.

Sagalout · 23 Dec 2008 at 21:40

http://codeigniter.com/

Should answer everything for you

Talbs13 · 23 Dec 2008 at 22:20

Thank you very much! This is amazing!

Here's a cookie.