| The mailto script
is used to gather data from a form and email it to the
specified address. If you want to use forms on your web
site to collect data from your customers, get feedback,
or take orders, then you can use the mailto
script. There is also another script that you can use
called appendto that will be covered in another
section. .
Follow the steps below for
using the mailto script.
- Create your HTML file
with the form on it. Forms can be created using
most Web authoring programs. If you don't know
how to create forms, refer to the following URLs
for creating forms:
Webcom's Forms Tutorial
HTML Forms Tutorial by
NCSA
- Once you've created
your form, you will need to set the METHOD
of the form to POST and the ACTION
of the form to http://home.earthlink.net/cgi-bin/mailto.
<FORM
METHOD="POST"
ACTION="http://home.earthlink.net/cgi-bin/mailto">
- You will also need to
add the two hidden fields below in between the
begin form tag and the end form tag:
<INPUT
TYPE="HIDDEN"
NAME="RECIPIENT" VALUE="user@domain.com">
<INPUT
TYPE="HIDDEN"
NAME="THANKURL" VALUE="URL_for_a_thankyou_page">
where user@domain.com
is the email address to which you want the data
from the form sent and URL_for_a_thankyou_page
is the URL of a page (e.g.,
http://home.earthlink.net/~username/thankyou.html)
that you will need to create telling the user
that the data from the form has been sent.
| The words RECIPIENT
and THANKURL are
keywords that the script will need. Both
keywords are case sensitive. You will get
a Server error if the
script does not find both of the keywords
and if the cases don't match to the ones
above. |
Below is a sample
form that you can
copy and paste with very little modification.
| <!-- begin sample html page
--> <html>
<head>
<title>Sample Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Sample
Form</h1>
<hr>
<form
method="post"
action="http://home.earthlink.net/cgi-bin/mailto">
<input type="hidden"
name="RECIPIENT"
value="user@domain.com">
<input type="hidden"
name="THANKURL"
value="http://home.earthlink.net/~username/thankyou.html">
<p>
<b>Name:</b><input
type="text" name="name"
size="30"><br>
<b>Email:</b><input
type="text" name="email"
size="30"><p>
<b>Comments:</b><br>
<textarea name="comments"
rows="10"
cols="50"></textarea>
<p>
<input type="submit"
value="Send">
<input type="reset"
value="Clear">
</form>
<p>
<hr>
</body>
</html>
<!-- end
sample html page -->
|
On the
above sample form, you will need to replace username
with your own EarthLink username and user@domain.com
with the email address to which you want the data from
the form sent. Feel free to copy and paste the sample
form above to your favorite text editor and then save it
as form.html.
You will also need to
create your own confirmation (thank you) page. For your
convenience, we have provided a copy and paste sample
confirmation page below.
The confirmation page is
displayed after the visitor has clicked on the Submit
button and the data from the form has been saved. As with
the sample above, you may copy and paste from this
directly into an HTML file.
| <!-- begin sample thank you
page --> <html>
<head>
<title>Thank You!!!</title>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<h1>Thank
You!!!</h1>
</center>
<p>
<center>
The information you provided has been sent. We
will get back with you as soon as we can.
</center>
<p>
</body>
</html>
<!-- end
sample thank you page -->
|
Feel free
to copy and paste the sample thank you page above to your
favorite text editor and then save it as thankyou.html.
Other Related Pages
Forms Menu
Confirmation
Page
Options
Putting It All Together
Frequently Asked Questions
|