If you need to add an HTML form to your website,
then you are going to need a PHP file commonly known
as Formmail, which processes the HTML form and sends
the results to you via email. Before using formmail,
you need to understand how it works and what you need
to do before installing it on your website. To create
a Formmail file, you can either write the PHP code
yourself (which is impossible unless you are experienced),
or you can download the code from one of the many
sites that have made the code available. After you
download it, you will need to modify the code in order
to adapt it to the form you have created. The first
challenge you will face is changing the code, if need
be, so that it automatically checks to make sure that
all required fields from your form have been completed.
Some versions of Formmail automatically include this
code, some do not. If it does not include this code,
you will need to hire a programmer to create it, or
ask someone on a programming message board to help
you with it. The next challenge you will face is writing
the code that will create the email message containing
the answers to the form and send it to the email address
you specified in the code for your HTML form. This
is extremely difficult to do if you are not familiar
with PHP. Again, you will need the help of a programmer
if you can not do it. Also, you will need to make
sure that included, somewhere in the code, is protection
against spammers who will try to send spam through
your form by altering the recipient field. To prevent
this, you need to create a variable in the Formmail
file that authorizes only the email address you are
using as the recipient. For example, if you have set
up your form so that the results will be sent to your
Yahoo email account, then you need to insert some
code into the Formmail file that prevents the form
from being submitted unless your Yahoo email account
is the recipient. If you do not this, people will
be able to send spam right through your form, which
brings us to another important point. Because it is
possible to send spam through a form if the Formmail
file is not created properly and does not authorize
only one email address as the recipient, a few web
hosting companies do not allow their customers to
run forms on their sites. Or, they use their own PHP
files to process your form, which gives you less flexibility.
The better web hosting companies all allow forms and
allow you to create your own formmail file to process
your HTML form. The better web hosting companies also
have extensive firewall protection built into their
servers to prevent spam if a form is vulnerable. I
hope this information will help you set up Formmail
on your website to process your HTML form. Call your
hosting company and ask them if they currently have
your site hosted on a server that can process forms.
If they do not allow their customers to process forms
or have certain rules that restrict your flexibility,
you should switch to a better hosting provider that
will allow you to use Formmail.