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Plain Contact Form - On Hostgator

by AlanCarr
14 replies
Web-based stuff drives me nuts.

I happily use a WYSIWYG editor (yes, it's standards compliant) and it suits me fine, usually.

However the forms it can produce and which work peachy on my normal host, don't seem to work on Hostgator?

The thing continously sends me a blank email, about one every 20 mins or so. I spoke to "support" and it was on the level of looking under the hood, kicking the tyre and saying "I think there's something wrong with it".

OK, actual words were "It's probably the script".

All I need is a plain and simple contact form, name, email, message. Importantly, it has to be one proven to work on Hostmonster.

Any ideas? Perhaps something I can turn off on the cpanel, such as the "send blank emails forever" button somewhere?



B.
#contact #form #hostgator #plain
  • Profile picture of the author kylaefa
    you can search that on google im sure there are many result
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  • Profile picture of the author Bigsofty
    Actually this thread comes up as the first result - quick eh?

    There's this:

    The Road

    Which seems to confirm it being a Hostgator issue, which is my point and why I'm not chasing every script on Google.

    I'm looking for one known to work on Hostgator.


    B.
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  • Profile picture of the author Bigsofty
    Thanks for the bump PC12168



    OK, some vague progress, of sorts..

    Formmail demo

    That apparantly is the "proper" form to use on Hostgator. Take a look at it; it's crap.

    No name?

    So I write back to my client, "Dear Nobody,.."?

    Said client is supposed to write me an email, in a single line, 20 characters long? WTF?

    Any HMTL guru know how I can make the actual message box bigger? I can make it longer, just change the 20 to 60 or something, but how do I make it deeper, ie more than a single freakin' line?

    And is there any way of adding a name field to that, as I find a lot of people have names...?



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    • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
      How about posting your code here (both html and script code) and lets see if we can get it working..

      Maybe its something eay.. Who knows

      Bruce
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  • Profile picture of the author Bigsofty
    Cheers Bruce,

    Well I've given up on any php script, as I'm pretty sure that's something screwy on HG's end. It works and sends me email but keeps on sending emails even when no-one's using it.

    This is the official and approved script that Hostgator doesn't disable by default or have a panic attack over:


    <html>
    <head>
    <title>Formmail demo</title>
    </head>
    <body>
    <form action="http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-sys/formmail.pl" method="post">
    <input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="">
    <input type="hidden" name="subject" value="Form mail email">
    Email me!<BR><BR>
    <input type="text" name="email" size="20" value="Visitor email"><BR>
    <input type="text" name="tellme" size="20" value="Email content"><BR><BR>
    <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Email me!">
    </form>
    </body>
    </html>

    Now the "tellme" (WTF?) bit is, as you can see, 20 characters long. I can make it longer or shorter, heck I've been doing that since I was 13 but I digress... what I wanna know is, how do I make that bit deeper?

    Say 50 lines or so?

    Can I just change it to something such as:

    <input type="text" name="tellme" size="20 x 50" value="Email

    or something? And if so, what's the HTMLy manner of doing such a thing?



    B.
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    • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
      Hi..

      Change the lines that reads :

      Code:
      <input type="text" name="tellme" size="20" value="Email content"><BR><BR>
      to

      Code:
      <textarea name="tellme" cols="20" rows="10" value="Email content"></textarea>
      This shoul do the trick

      Hope this helps

      Bruce
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  • Profile picture of the author Bigsofty
    That's the ticket!

    Up until now I've had to use a plain autoresponder from a different website, just pasted the html sign-up box on the hostgator site and ran the actual process from my other server. Damn silly arrangement but worked.

    I tried adding that original line as well, with "Your name", which seems to work.

    Sorted.

    OK, thanks Bruce, kudos etc



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  • Profile picture of the author bobmcalister
    here is what chris sent me
    <input type="text" name="email" size="20" value="Visitor email"><BR>

    With 50 Characters:
    <input type="text" name="email" size="50" value="Visitor email"><BR>
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  • Profile picture of the author Bigsofty
    Bob, that just makes the field longer, so you end up with a narrow strip. Bruce's solution already worked


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    • Profile picture of the author FredJones
      Very old thread this one - but I found it while searching the Internet wanting to implement this exact functionality. The patch here worked.

      BUT...

      I could not figure how to add the recipient - could someone help? I tried to click submit and it came back with a missing fields - recipient missing message.
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      • Profile picture of the author lleiderm
        Thanks for this thread. I have been trying to do the same thing.

        1. I got it to "work" on Hostgator, but after executing the form it went to a page that said the form was submitted, and displayed the data. I attached a screen shot.

        Of course, I do not want this to happen to my user. Is there a way to tell it to go to a page on my site after successful submission? Or even to just stay on the form submission page?

        If the answer is no, I wonder if you know of a script I can use on Hostgator that allows the visitor to fill out a form that is sent to me without being directed to a geeky looking page after submission?

        2. Also, I could only get it to work with it sending an email to an address on my hostgator account, one I created associated with my site domain.
        Is there a way to use this script to send mail to an email address not hosted on the Hostgator server?
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      • Profile picture of the author lleiderm
        Originally Posted by FredJones View Post

        Very old thread this one - but I found it while searching the Internet wanting to implement this exact functionality. The patch here worked.

        BUT...

        I could not figure how to add the recipient - could someone help? I tried to click submit and it came back with a missing fields - recipient missing message.
        You can set the recipient using the code given in the post.

        Here is what I used:

        <input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="XXX@XXX">

        The XXX@XXX is an email account I set up on Hostgator using cpanel for my domain.

        I don't know if you are required to use an email address associated with the domain the form is being executed on. I originally tried it with an email address from a different company (Earthlink), and it would not run. It gave me an error message asking if that email address is on this server. So it might work for any email address on the server your site it hosted on, but I don't know.
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  • Profile picture of the author lleiderm
    Hi,
    Below is the code I have on my page. It works okay. I receive the email with the form data in it. But, as I said, the page it ends up on is

    "<my site domain> /cgi-sys/formmail.pl"

    and this just displays what was sent in the email. It is essentially not on my site. You have to hit the browser back button to get back to the page with the form they filled in. This is unacceptable to inflict on a site visitor. I need to know how to get the form processed and have it either stay on the form fill-out page with some sort of "success" message on it, or sent to another page on my site.

    Also, I have changed my email to "XXX@XXX" so the harvesters don't get it.
    Also, the warrior forum will not let me put links in my email because I have less than 15 posts. So I had to change the form processing link to contain <mysitedomain>.



    <b>Try this:</b><br>
    <br>

    <form method="post"
    action="<mysitedomain> /cgi-sys/formmail.pl">
    <input value="XXX@XXX"
    type="hidden"
    name="recipient"> <input value="Form mail email"
    type="hidden"
    name="subject"> Email me!<br>
    <br>
    <input value="Visitor email"
    size="30"
    name="email"><br>
    <textarea rows="10"
    name="tellme"
    value="Email content">
    </textarea><br>
    <br>
    <input value="Email me!"
    type="submit"
    name="submit">
    </form>
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  • Profile picture of the author AlanCarr
    Lloyd,

    What ultimately worked for me was changing hosts!

    Also I now use Simfatic Forms, which is cheap as chips yet a full, professional form making software you can view as a long term investment.

    Simfatic Forms: a complete web forms software


    Alan
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