FORM MAILER SCRIPT

There are many different methods or components that you can use on a web server to send email to you from a viewer of your page:

1. You can use a server-side technology like PHP, ASP, or Coldfusion to send form fields to a database. However, this requires you to know how to program in one of these languages.
2. You can simply use an email address as the action attribute of the form tag (<form action="your_name@your_email_address.com"> .....</form>)
3. However, this tutorial will show you how to use a form mailer script to process your form and send the information to you in a more formatted style than option 2.

Download a Form Mailer Script and its Instructions

There are many form mailers for the various types of server-side technologies, etc. that you could download. For example, there is one ASP, PHP, Coldfusion and CGI. One of the most popular is the PHP Form Mailer (formmail.php) that we have provided for you in the zip file. 
NOTE: You may want to search the web for an updated version if you need to.
NOTE: Don't use CDONTS for ASP or CF as they may be discontinued due to capatibility with Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Create a Form

Create a page (usually the Contact Us page) with a form on it and include all of the necessary form elements you need including a Submit button.

Create a Thank You Page

Create a Thank You page to your liking with text and/or graphics.

Add Fields to the Form

Using the PHP Script that is provided, all you need to do is add the following three hidden fields anywhere in the form tag of your form page. After the Submit button is fine.

1. While optional, it is highly recommended that you mask your email address from any spammers. You can add any random numbers/alphabets you want to as the recipient value:
   
   <input type= "hidden" name="recipient" value="987654321a,123456789b" />
   
   
2. Add a subject value that will appear in the Subject field of the email:
   
   <input type= "hidden" name="subject" value="Email from YourCompanyName Web Site" />
   
   
3. Add a redirect value that will take the user to a Thank You page.
   
   <input type= "hidden" name="redirect" value="thankyou.html" />

Edit the Form Script

Edit the PHP Form Mailer Script in Dreamweaver or another editor.  While there are many parameters you can update (See Form Script documentation page on how to update all of them), we will only update only a few of the required fields and a few others.

Make a backup copy of the form mailer (in our case, formmail.php) just in case you need a fresh copy and then make changes to the original file by updating the following lines to match your web site domain names, etc:

Line 40: $referers = array('www.your_company_name.com.com', your_company_name.com.com');

Line 44: $recipient_array = array('287654319a' => 'your_name@your_company_name.com', '923456781b' => 'support@your_company_name.com');

Line 63: ini_set("SMTP","mail.your_company_name.com");

Line 70: ini_set('sendmail_from', 'your_name@your_company.com');

NOTE: See form mailer documentation for complete detail instruction.

Upload Files to Your Server

Upload the form page any where on your site.  However, upload, the PHP Form Mailer script and the Thank You page to the same directory the PHP Form Mailer Script is in.