Using Form Mail To Create E-Mail Feedback Forms
Active Web Hosting has a special script (called an E-Mail bot) for you to
use if you wish to have your visitors send you E-Mail from feedback form which
you can put on your web site.
A Simple Web Form
Simply copy the code below and paste it into your web page using an HTML editor.
Then make the appropriate changes to the form code to fit your needs as outlined
below.
Please change the following in the code. The areas which you'll want to change are usually in all upper-case letters, though you can use lower case letters in the information you replace it with.
YOUREMAIL@YOURDOMAIN.COM: Substitute with your own E-Mail address you wish to have the feedback sent to. NOTE: You must use an email address that is hosted on your domain for the second one for who the email is from. This is to help prevent misuse of the email. Please use a normal field for obtaining the visitor's email address. You can then cut this address from the email you recieve and paste it into the TO: field if you need to reply to an email sent from your web site.
EMAIL SUBJECT LINE: The subject line you want the feedback E-Mail to have. This can by anything you wish. This is useful if you want to set up your E-Mail client to put E-Mail messages from your visitors into a special folder. For example, you could use the subject line My Home Page Feedback.
HTTP://YOURDOMAIN.COM/FULL_URL_TO_THANK_YOU.HTML is the full URL to the web page that you want your visitor to see once they clicked on the "Submit" button. A suggestion would be a page thanking them for their feedback, information on when you might be able to reply to them (if at all), and a link back to your main site. It's always nice to have a Thank You page. If you link back to your home page instead, your visitors might become confused and wonder if their feedback 'went through'. A Thank You page confirms that their feedback was sent to you.
Be sure you at least have a to, from (which is in the form field
for E-Mail), subject, and a message in your form. It is never a good idea
to allow your visitors to fill in a to field as this can become a security
risk and be abused to send spam.
NOTE: If your visitor does not leave an E-Mail message, then you
will not receive the message sent from the web form. You will want to
place a notice just before the form to warn users that they must provide
an E-Mail address in order for you to receive their message.
Adding, Removing, and Changing Fields
You can further customize the form to suit your needs. To start with, you'll
want to add, delete or change the following line in your form. Note the bold
areas show where you should add or apply your changes. If you are deleting a
line, just remove the whole line from the form. Keep in mind that the example
code below should actually be all on one line.
<tr><td align="right" valign="top">Web Site Address:</td><td><input type="text" name="websiteurl" size="50"></td></tr>
Next you will need to edit the part that will be the body of the E-Mail message that is sent to you when the visitor presses the Submit button. Note again the bold areas are where changes are to be made or added. Do not delete this line! The code below should actually be all on one line.
<input type="hidden" name="notefields" value="Name:~~visitorname~~<BR><BR>E-Mail:~~from~~<BR><BR>Web Site Address:~~websiteurl~~<BR><BR>Comments:~~comments~~<BR>">
Anytime you add another parameter from your form, you use it in the above code
by preceeding and following the parameter name with two tilde characters. For
example, ~~websiteurl~~ is the name="websiteurl" from your form
field. Whatever your visitor types in this field while filling out the form will
appear in this spot in the E-Mail message to you.
Formatting The E-Mail Response
When you receive the E-Mail from the web form, it will be formatted a certain way.
Basically it is a text message located in the hidden field notefields as
explained above. While you can not use HTML tags in the value=
part of this field, you can only use <BR> to provide a line break so that
what comes after that will be on the next line. You also can not use HTML tags
while filling out the form itself, or they will be sent to you in plain text
HTML code and not as an HTML E-Mail. This is for security reasons so that your
visitors can not send malicious HTML code to your E-Mail account.