Email links in Websites

Posted by Sheila Pritchard on December 6, 2009 at 1:01pm

Hello I have built my website using Dreamweaver and have created a form for potential customers to reply directly from my website. However the mail to option means that:

An e-mail link opens a new blank message window (using the mail program associated with the user’s browser)

This is Ok when the user has Outlook etc installed but it cannot find the mail program when these are webmail programs. I have read the Help screens in Dreamweaver but am stumped as to what to do next. I think I maybe losing business because the forms are not getting sent.

Does anyone know how I get around this please?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:07

Reply by blak on December 6, 2009 at 1:36pm

Have a look at this W3 Schools tutorial, it might help.

There are loads of tutorials and forums specifically for programmers/developers that covers pretty much all you need to know.

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:08

Hi Sheila,

The best way is to use a form to have the details emailed to you. The form is then attached to a script and the forms content emailed to the recipient you add in the form.

It also stops spammers from picking up your email address from the website.

If you have a look in your Cpanel under site software you will see a formmail script. It will display the URL for you and give further instructions. The formmail URL is what you enter into Dreamweaver when you create the form.

http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html

I hope this helps.

Regards

Compila

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:08

Reply by Sheila Pritchard on December 6, 2009 at 6:13pm

Thank you so much, I shall give this a go tomorrow. I can now stop worrying and go Christmas partying!

Sheila

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:09

Reply by Sheila Pritchard on December 6, 2009 at 6:14pm

Thank you Blak, I shall enjoy checking this out.

Sheila

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:10

Reply by Sheila Pritchard on December 8, 2009 at 2:21pm

Thank you Compila for your advice but I am still struggling. I have done as you suggested and gone to Software from my CPanel but I cannot find any reference to the formmail script. However I did follow the link that you put in your reply and this took me to Matt's archive site. This I found confusing but ended up registering with www.formmail.com for a free form builder. However this is something that I did not really want to do because as far as I can tell it takes me to formmail's server where my account is set up. What I would like to do if from the form action is to be able to go to my own cgi bin or where ever. This is the bit that I really need help with. From the W3 site again the action is where I would put my email address and unless a user has mail installed on their PC they cannot email from the Internet.
So, could you please tell me how I can find on CPanel the code that I need to write in my form.

Many thanks.

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:10

Reply by Compila Limited on December 8, 2009 at 3:56pm

Hi Sheila,

Under Cpanel > CGI Center > Formmail clone

It will give you a url like this - http://domain.co.uk/cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi

(Please change domain.co.uk to your actual domain name)

Here is an example form: I have had to disable the first < from the beginning of each of form tags otherwise you will not see the code. So please remember to add < back in to the beginning of each line.

form action="http://domain.co.uk/cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi" method="post">

**** These ones are required *****

input name="realname" type="text" id="realname" size="30" />
input name="email" type="text" size="30"/>
input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit Form" />
input name="reset" type="reset" id="reset" value="Reset Form" />

input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="your@email.co.uk" />

/form>

****** These ones are optional and would go inside the form tags if you need them *******

input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.domain.co.uk/thankyou.html" />
input type="hidden" name="sort" value="order:realname, email" />
input name="required" type="hidden" value="realname, email" />
input type="hidden" name="subject" value="Subject you require" />

Regards

Compila

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:11

Reply by Sheila Pritchard on December 9, 2009 at 2:49pm

Thank you Compila staff for all your help. I am now half way there! The registration forms can now be completed on line and submitted to me successfully. However as a "nice to have" I thought I would use the optional code that you gave to me. I assumed that I needed to create another html page and named it thankyou.html and then created the code as follows but with the starting tags:

input type="hidden" name="redirect" value="http://www.personalcomputertutor.me.uk/thankyou.html"/>
input type="hidden" name="sort" value="order:realname, email" />
input name="required" type="hidden" value="realname, email" />
input type="hidden" name="subject" value="Subject you require" />

Unfortunately the above code returned an Error 404. Can you see what I have done wrong?
I do hope that this is the correct forum for asking these questions because they are specific to my learning process. If not then I apologise and I am sure someone will let me know.

Thanks again for all your help.

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:11

Hi Sheila

I have just pasted this URL into a browser and it comes up with a 404 page not found error.

http://www.personalcomputertutor.me.uk/thankyou.html

Have you created the thankyou.html page and uploaded it to you public_html folder?

Please make sure if you have that it is named named correctly i.e. all lowercase.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:11

Reply by Sheila Pritchard on December 9, 2009 at 7:19pm

Hello Harvey

I am sorry to be such a pain but I have now discovered why this is happening. I put the thankyou.html into a folder named documents! I have now changed the code in the Registration form to include documents in the path and it now works!

Thanks for all of your help and I do hope that this is helpful to anyone else on the forum who still has lots to learn.

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 15, 2009 at 8:12

Hi Sheila,

Excellent news, we are very happy it is working for you now.

Regards

Compila

Permalink Reply by Martin Bleasby on December 29, 2009 at 19:26

Hi Compila,

Thanks for the link to this post..

It seems this is just what I require, but I;m not to sure how to link the form to the script, unless it's just pointed to the correct place on the server during the construction of the form?..

Any pointers will help??
Best wishes,

Martin.

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 30, 2009 at 5:25

Hi Martin

When you create the form, not sure if you are doing this by hand i.e. in notebook or a web design package, but when the form is created, there will be an "action" section.

form action="http://domain.co.uk/cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi" method="post">

This is how you point the form to the script on the server.

Regards

Compila