Preserved Topic: Backing Up (Beep beep beep...)

Someone has come to me inquiring about a problem he has with a particular Web site and I want to look smart and give him a good answer. So, I need you guys to help me look smart. <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/smile.gif">

The site in question has a form used to submit personal information. What happens is, after a visitor submits the form, he decides to go back and change something and submits the form again. This results in two member entries and is becoming a problem.

What my friend would like to do is somehow prevent the user from backing up--expire the page, come up with another page--something to discourage him from resubmitting the form. I know of one site which uses the following method: When the user submits the form, the user is directed to a page with an instant redirect to the actual "thank you" page. That way, if the user presses "back," he's again redirected forward to the "thank you" page. It's a bit kludgy, I know, and the user can always bring up the browser history and go back two pages, but the method seems to work all right with the same type of users who would submit a form twice.

However, I would like to discover something a little more sleek. Anyone done this before? Have any ideas? All are welcome.

Thanks!

Set a cookie when he submits the form. Them when he hits it again it can redirect him elsewhere


Walking the Earth like Kane

If the form contains information such as their name or a screen name or something similar, I would do a test when the form is submitted to make sure that someone with that name/screenname/whatever hasn't submitted the form before. If they have, then it should simply change the current entry.

I don't know any CGI languages yet, though, so I'm not sure *how* to go about doing this.

-Slime

"Windows: Just another pane in the glass."

I know nothing about all this programming stuff, but I have heard of a way you can actually delete the page from the browser's history so that if they go back it just skips over the form. It is placed in the thank you page so that if there is a problem in the form, the user can still go back to it.

Anyone else heard of this and/or knows how to do it?




What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine to - First Rule of a Dictatorship

I think that may be possible with JavaScript... the location.replace("newurl"); function should go to the newurl page and not put it in the history (this is helpful for forwarding stuff). Give it a shot, both at the entrance and exit of the page.

Another way to discourage this is to re-place the form on the next page with the same info filled in, and make it so that when *that* form is sumbitted, it just changes the info. That will discourage using the back button.

Thanks, guys. I'm letting the guy know about the different possibilities. I forget now why submitting the form twice is actually a problem. You would think it could just reject a submission with the same user name, etc... Actually, that may be the problem. They might be backing up and changing the user name, resulting in extra, unused accounts, rather than their using the account management form to change it. I dunno, but these ideas will get him started, thanks.