Install Your Own Scripts Form Building Tutorial

Welcome to Part 4 of Building Your Own Forms

In our last lesson, we went through the process of deciding what information to collect and how to lay it out.

Now we'll make it work.

You'll first need to decide what info you want to make required. After that, we will put our hands on the "back-end" part of the form - the Form to Mail script.

As the name implies, it accepts data on your form and allows you to email it to wherever you want. You can also populate databases and a few other things, but we will stay with the emailing because for the average web site owner, that's what it's used for.

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Deciding on a Form to Mail Script:

There are many out there. There are many free ones. So where do we look? You can search many script sites, such as Hotscripts.com. You will need to search under things like "Form Handlers".

But before you go all out searching, here's one I use and recommend: Mail Manage EX It's free and easy to set up, as you'll discover. For the purposes of this tutorial, I recommend downloading this one so you'll be able to follow along exactly.

Download and unzip the contents to your hard drive. You will see the following files in the folder called mmex: formsettings.stg, mmex.php, readme.html and sample.htm. We have no need for the sample.htm, so ignore it. Open the readme.html and give it a read through. They are helpful. The mmex.php file needs no updating. It just gets uploaded to your server.

So that leaves the formsettings.stg. Why don't we just look at it here. You'll note that there are many configuration settings. Don't worry. We are not using very many. The ones we're concerned with are the ones I configured (in red). Take a look:

<?
#=================================
# Form configuration
#=================================

# MAIN SETTINGS
$send_type = 'email';
$recipient = 'you@yourdomain.com';
$required = 'name,email1,email2,scripts,domain,cpanel,cpuser,cppass,receipt';
$confirm = '';
$formatted = '';
$preview = '';
$senderrors = '';
$SMTP_Server = 'mail.yourdomain.com';
$timezone = '';

# DISPLAY SETTINGS
$header = '';
$footer = '';

$font_size = '';
$font_color = '';
$font_weight = '';
$font_family = '';
$no_answer = '';

# EMAIL SETTINGS
$cc = '';
$bcc = '';
$subject = 'Form Submission from my site';
$emailtemplate = '';
$textemail = '';
$htmlemails = '1';
$attachments = '';
$attachdir = '';
$allowedExt = 'jpg,jpeg,gif,zip,txt,doc';


# MYSQL DATABASE SETTINGS
$db_user = '';
$db_pass = '';
$db_name = '';
$table_name = '';
$input_env_vars = '';

# CSV FILE SETTING
$csvfile_name = '';

# FLAT-FILE SETTING
$flatfile_name = '';

# AFTER SUBMISSION SETTINGS
$thankyou = "Thank you $name for your submission. <br><br>We will email you shortly.";
$redirect = '';
$auto_respond = '';
$auto_subject = '';
$auto_content = "";

# SECURITY SETTINGS
$flood_control = '';
$floodfile_name = '';
$interval = '';
$ip_block = '';
$ipfile_name = '';

# PLUG-IN SETTINGS
$runplugin = '';
$pluginfile = '';

#===================================
?>

 

That's it. The rest are variables that you don't really need. You can read the readme.html to decide if you want to use them. Let's see what we have:

$send_type = 'email'; - This identifies that you want to send the results via email.
$recipient = 'you@yourdomain.com'; - This is where you want the mail to go to.
$required = 'name,email1,email2,scripts,domain,cpanel,cpuser,cppass,receipt'; - These are required fields you want the users to fill out.

$SMTP_Server = 'mail.yourdomain.com'; - Your server info.
$subject = 'Form Submission from my site'; - This will appear in your email subject when someone submits a form.

$thankyou = "Thank you $name for your submission. <br><br>We will email you shortly."; - Not required, but it personalizes it a bit.

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Setting Required Fields In Your Form:

You probably noticed the $required field above. This tells the form script to check that any required fields you specified are filled in, or it will show the user an error message.

So now we have to go back to our form and identify the required fields. This is a simple procedure. We will add a new form element to identify the required fields. It's a hidden tag - which means that the user does not see it. It looks like this: <input type="hidden" name="hiddenField">

Within the hidden field tag, you need to place the NAMES of the fields you want to make required. So if you want the fields name,email1,email2,scripts,domain,cpanel,cpuser,cppass,receipt to be required, then put them in the tag like this:

<input type="hidden" name="name,email1,email2,scripts,domain,cpanel,cpuser,cppass,receipt">

So now your form will look like this:

<form>

<input type="hidden" name="name,email1,email2,scripts,domain,cpanel,cpuser,cppass,receipt">
<table width="70%" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="52%"> <p align="right">Name:</p></td>
<td width="48%"><input name="name" type="text" id="name" size="25"></td>
</tr>
. . . . . . . . (rest of the code remains the same)
</form> 

The Final Step to Form Completion:

Well, we're almost there. The last remaining piece of the puzzle is to identify the form processor and the settings.

As you saw earlier, you have two files: mmex.php and formsettings.stg. We need to add a couple more tags to the form you have created.

You need to make sure that your <form> tag has at least these two elements:
<form method="post" action="yourdomain../../mmex.php">

Note: If your mmex.php file is uploaded to the same folder as the form, you only need to put mmex.php in the action field.

You need to set a hidden type in the form to reference which settings you want for this form.
There are two ways you can do this:

If the setting files are in the same folder as mmex.php write only the file name:
<input type="hidden" name="settings" value="formsettings.stg">

If the setting file(s) is in a different folder than mmex.php you must write the absolute path of the settings file:
<input type="hidden" name="settings" value="http://www.domain.com/hr/formsettings.stg">

Now your form code will look like this:

<form method="post" action="http://www.domain.com/hr/mmex.php">
<input type="hidden" name="settings" value="http://www.domain.com/hr/formsettings.stg">

<input type="hidden" name="name,email1,email2,scripts,domain,cpanel,cpuser,cppass,receipt">
<table width="70%" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="52%"> <p align="right">Name:</p></td>
<td width="48%"><input name="name" type="text" id="name" size="25"></td>
</tr>
. . . . . . . . (rest of the code remains the same)
</form> 

We're Ready To Test!

You should now test your form. You can test the one below from a users standpoint, but you will not receive the emails.

Required fields are noted with a *

*Name:

*Contact Email:
*Alternate Contact Email:
Telephone Number:
*Script to be Installed:
Web Host Name:
*Domain Name:
*Control Panel URL:
*Control Panel User Name:
*Control Panel Password:
*Your Payment Receipt #:
How did you hear about our services?:

Search Engine
Recommended
Ezine Ad
Other

 

Did you see the confirmation? You can also try leaving out a required field and see the results. Speaking of which, don't forget to clearly mark your form which fields are required so your users know. See the example above.

If you built your form correctly, you will get an email whenever your form is filled out.

That wasn't so hard, was it? Have fun with your new skill.

End of Part 4

I sincerely hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that you learned something. Once you have gained confidence in your new found skills, try your hand at script installations.

Install Your Own Scripts is a step-by-step guide that will teach you just how simple it is to install your own scripts. You'll never need to pay someone else again.


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Tired of paying others to install your scripts for you?

Are you interested in telling your script installer to "Take a hike!"?

Then you need Install Your Own Scripts. The new ebook from script installer Michael Ambrosio. It's Jam-Packed with extremely easy to follow step-by-step script installation lessons.

And you learn by actually installing THREE different scripts!

Don't delay. Order Now.
Tell your installer to Take A Hike!