Forms, part 4 - Make it work!

The only other parts of the form we are going to use right now are the Submit and Reset buttons.

They are easy to find in the palette. Reset clears the form so people can start again - that is, it sets it back to default, so anyh default values you put in will reappear. Submit sends the form - except it doesn't send it anywhere useful, not by itself.

The only thing to pay attention to in the inspector is that you can check 'Label' and put in the text you want to appear on the button.

To see how the form looks now, click here.

You will find that you can fill in the form and reset it, but trying to submit it gets you a message full of gobbledygook.

When I first mastered setting out a form and getting it to look the way I wanted, I thought I'd really achieved something. Then the dreadful truth dawned - it doesn't work. I was furious.

When I calmed down, I investigated.

Here's the way it works.

With only Golive at your disposal, you do have one way of letting people fill in the form, they send it, you get the results. Here's how - select the little square with an 'F' in it, the form object we placed first, and look at the inspector.

That's it. Upload and test.

When someone clicks Submit, their email software - Outlook Express or whatever - will open up, with your email address filled in and whatever they put in the form as the message. They click send, you get an email.

For various reasons, this may be your only option.

But it is to be avoided if at all possible. Why?

1. You are relying on someone's email software being set up correctly and it often won't be.
2. Worse, they now have your email address and 'they', very often, will not be people you want to hear from. Your email address is in the code of the page, and easily harvested by spammers, who will proceed to put you on lists which they sell and pass on to each other.

Now, you may not care too much, maybe you have ways to filter out spam. But the majority of email sent now is spam, it's clogging up the whole system, and I really hope you won't encourage the pond-life who send it if you can help it.

There is another reason not to use this method - it's very limited. If you use the second way, you can do all kinds of things, like redirect people to a customisable thank-you page, make people use an actual email address, easily have the results sent to various addresses at once, easily control the subject line of the email, make fields required, include the sender's name (if you ask for it!) in the email and various other requirements.

Where do you get one? How much does it cost?

The first port of call should be your web-hosting service. The majority of them have pre-installed forms scripts, and instructions for using them. They will tell you where the form should be sent - the Action - and anything else you need to know.

If your web-host does not provide this service, Google for cgi scripts - there are lots available, most are free. In this case you will have to upload the script, probably to a cgi-bin on your server before you use it - check with your web host.

However, many cgi scripts are not very secure. They can be hijacked by spammers, who can then send out mass emails which look as though they come from you.

The best way

Nate Baldwin has provided a superb, free form script using a language called PHP - which you do NOT need to learn or understand. It will only work if your web hosting service allows the use of php, but Nate has a tiny test you can do, included with the form script, so you needn't waste any more time if php is not available to you.

It's easy, it's very customisable and the pdf manual is clear and user-friendly. Nate also has a forum on his site, where you can get any problems sorted out very quickly. And, no, I'm not related to him or on commission!

For the best way I know to get your form working, securely (although no absolute guarantees), please go to:

http://www.mindpalette.com/formprocessing/index.php

If you have Natemail and would like a pictorial step-by-step of the basic process, although I think the pdf Nate provides is very clear, please contact me.