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 Martin Bleasby on December 30, 2009 at 9:34

Hi Compila,

Many thanks indeed , this has helped. I will be using DW CS4. I'll see how it goes. Many thanks for your help..

Best wishes,

Martin.

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 30, 2009 at 9:56

Hi Martin

No problem at all, we are glad to help.

Regards

Compila

Permalink Reply by Martin Bleasby on December 30, 2009 at 13:29

Hi Complia,

Ok thanks.. I understand..

The only question I have from reading the above is about the fields in the form, how does the script know what to extract from the form?.. will there be some editing to the script, ir will this be on the form>??

Best ,

Martin.

Permalink Reply by Martin Bleasby on December 30, 2009 at 14:33

Hello Compila,

I've just put a small form together and the errors are as follows..any help would be useful

Martin.

There are missing fields!
recipient is missing

Form Dump:
comments: Hi
email: me@nildram.co.uk
enquiry type: Commission
name: Marty
submit: Submit Form

Permalink Reply by Compila Limited on December 31, 2009 at 8:14

Hi Martin,

Whenever you create a form and use the formail clone script, you have to have 3 default fields in your form.

These are;

email - this is a text field and is where your visitor would enter their email address.
realname - this again is a text field and is where they would enter their name
recipient - this is a hidden field, it contains the email address you what the form details sent to i.e. your email address

You need to have all of these fields for the script to work properly.

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>

I hope this helps.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Martin Bleasby on December 31, 2009 at 8:41

Hello Harvey,

Many thanks for this..

I managed to get the form working by reading some of the set up info.. I still need to validate it though.. The email which is sent is quite basic in it;s looks and seems to go into my spam folder every time..

Best wishes,

Martin.

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on December 31, 2009 at 9:03

Hi Martin,

What is the subject line of your email? Could this be causing it? How about the from email address?

If you mark the email as not spam/junk, your email software should not put it into the spam folder next time.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Martin Bleasby on December 31, 2009 at 9:15

Harvey,

Thanks that works fine.... great...

I hope you dont mind me keep asking these questions?..

Harvey is there anyway the email can be made to look better, ie some html to improve the look??.

I did make some adjustments using the fields in the setup, but they only change the html page that the sender see's ..

Martin.

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on December 31, 2009 at 10:20

Hi Martin,

No problem at all.

Yes you could do this but not with the standard formmail clone script. You would need to write a script in php for example. There might be some free or cheap scripts available on this site if you are interested.

http://www.hotscripts.com

Regards

Harvey