Topic awaiting preservation: FeedBack Form... (Page 1 of 1)

Hi guys, I need some help with my site. I'm trying to make a feedback form so i can read the feedback on another page or in an email but i don't want to use any server side stuff like PHP etc etc. Can anyone help me out??

... e'sssaa 'de templar'e ...

I'm not 100% sure I understand you, but I'll give it a shot. I understand everything but the "on another page" part. So you're saying that you want people to be able to either a) send you a feedback e-mail, or b) post a comment that will appear on a comments page?

a) can be done with stupid basic html, but b) will require server-side coding. a) would be something along the lines of this...

<form name = "feedback" method = "post" action = "mailto:name@address?subject=Feedback">

...followed by your input fields and all. There are tons of tutorials and references on HTML forms out there. Here is one that I just found by Googling "html form tutorial".

I'm not too fond of using mailto: links, as they seem to get harvested pretty quickly, but you wanted a client-side solution, so there you go. If I misinterpreted your question, or if you'd like clarification, please let me know.


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org

I know that i can put a mailto in the form but i don't want anyone to find out my email. what was that thing you said about a comments page? how do i get that going??

... e'sssaa 'de templar'e ...

quote:

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I know that i can put a mailto in the form but i don't want anyone to find out my email.

---

Ah... see, there's the catch. There is no way to do this client-side without exposing your e-mail. If you really want to keep your e-mail hidden from view (as I do), you need to do it server-side. I do this with PHP... I just made some modifications to an excellent tutorial over at the GN: Building a Contact Page.

This is server-side, though, and so will any comments page you implement. I've never implemented a comments page before, but I know some of the inmates here have, so they might be able to help you.

Again, this is impossible to do on the client-side. If you're willing to go the server-side route, maybe we can move this thread over to that forum and you can get some more feedback there. If you really don't want to go server-side, then I'm afraid you're out of luck.

Just out of curiosity, why do you want to avoid server-side? If it's mere complexity/lack of experience that worries you, the above tutorial should help. If you'd like, you can also take a look at my contact page (this is a somewhat simplified version of what you get from the tutorial above). If what I've got going looks like something you'd like to use, I can send you the code for that. I would recommend you at least familiarize yourself with the tutorial first, though.

[This message has been edited by Suho1004 (edited 04-03-2004).]

ok I finally set out to use PHP the last few days and I've made a feedback form but i got a problem. Everythng works fine except when I say to send the feedback he only posts the "name" and "email" not the "message". This is what my pages look like:

This ones the form

<form action="feedback.php" method="post" name="mail">

 <div align=" center">

   <div align="center">

    <table class="text" width="215" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">

    <tr>

     <td width="77">Name</td>

     <td width="210"><input class="text" type="text" name="name" size="24" border="0"></td>

    </tr>

    <tr>

     <td width="77">Email</td>

     <td width="210"><input class="text" type="text" name="email" size="24" border="0"></td>

    </tr>

   <tr>

     <td valign="top" width="77">Message</td>

     <td width="210"><textarea name="textareaName" rows="4" cols="22"></textarea></td>

   </tr>

  </table>

  <input type="image" src="assets/images/send.gif" alt="Send FeedBack" align="middle" border="0"></div>

 </form>

And this is the "feedback.php" file

<b> Sender: </b> <?php echo $_POST["name"]; ?>,<br>

<b> Email: </b> <?php echo $_POST["email"]; ?>,<br>

<b> Message: </b> <?php echo $_POST["message"]; ?>.<br>

<br>

The output I get for this is:

Name: Blah Blah Blah
Email: Blah Blah Blah
Message:.

Where am I messing out? I guess you'll have to send this over to the Server-Side Forum.

... e'sssaa 'de templar'e ...

[This message has been edited by WarMage (edited 04-05-2004).]

Yup, this should go into the server-side forum, but I don't have the power to do that. Anyway, the answer to your problem is very simple. Take a close look at your code. What is the name of the textarea where the message goes? Now what name are you referring to in your PHP? They should be the same, but they're not--just change "textareaName" to "message" in your HTML and you'll be all set.

[Edit: This is a common problem, actually, especially when you go around changing names and forget to do it in one place. If you ever find yourself with a problem like this again, check to make sure all the names/ids/variable names etc. match.]


[This message has been edited by Suho1004 (edited 04-05-2004).]

it's also a good idea to put a 'error_reporting(E_ALL);' at the beginning of your php code - that way php will warn you about unset variables.


Meanwhile, I'm moving this to Server-Side Scripting - Oh my!.

Ok I got th feedback form running but what if I wanted to add some validation to it you know like if I want to have all the fields neccessary then what should I add to the script?

... e'sssaa 'de templar'e ...

Did you take a look at the tutorial I posted above? Not that I don't want to help, but I think going through that tutorial will answer a lot of your questions (about things like validation, for example). It's very well done, and easy to modify. For your convenience, here it is again:

Building a Contact Page

[Edit: Oh, yes, and a very good point by Mr. Prime about error reporting... Listen to the man, he knows what he's talking about.]

[This message has been edited by Suho1004 (edited 04-05-2004).]