What
is a form and how do I get a copy?
Can
I send the form to any e-mail address?
What is the source
code?
What are the elements
that make the form.htm work?
Can
my forms from FrontPage work?
My secure form
isn't working. What's wrong?
What
is a form and how do I get a copy?
Included with every new account at Coastline is a
sample online form called form.htm and a 'thank you'
page called thankyou.htm
The
form.htm file is simply a standard HTML form that you
can customize to fit your needs. You can also choose
to create your own form instead. When someone fills
out your form and submits the information, that
information is sent to you by email to the address
postmaster@(your domain name).
Your form must post to the form emailer script
located at: http://www.hostline.com/scripts/mail_form.asp.
This
URL contains a script that takes the contents of your
form and emails it to you.
You
can edit the hidden fields in the form.htm file and
replace the instances of "postmaster@yourdomain.com"
to send it to different addresses at your domain. You
can also change the domain name included in the file
but the domain name you choose must reside on a
coastline server. Your form cannot directly send email
to an address of a domain hosted elsewhere. You
can also specify the location of your 'thank you
page'. For detailed documentation on the
form.htm file and how to customize settings review our
detailed documentation.
Below
is the code for the form.htm file currently online at:
http://www.coastline.com/form.htm
Review
this code below and note the hidden fields located
within the form tags. These hidden field values
are highlighted in red, and the parts of the script
that you can modify (the email address and thank you
page) are highlighted in purple.
Can
I send the form to any e-mail address?
The
email address that you specify must be a local email address
to your domain account. By default, the postmaster@yourdomain.com
email address is setup at signup. If you have
other email address you may specify an alternate. Note
too that your postmaster@ or any other email
address may be set to forward. If this is the
case then the ultimate destination of any submitted
data would be whatever forwarding address has been set for
the corresponding local email address to your domain.
Example: postmaster@yourdomain.com is set to
forward to joe1234@aol.com. When you set your
script to submit it's data to postmaster@yourdomain.com
the postmaster address will forward to joe1234@aol.com.
What
is the Source
Code
for form.htm
|
<html>
<head>
<title>Online Form</title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"
text="#000000" link="#FF0000"
vlink="#0000FF" alink="#0000FF">
<div align="center">
<center>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0"
cellspacing="0" width="500">
<tr>
<td valign="top"
width="100%">
<font face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica">
<p align="left">Please use this form
to contact our staff.</p>
<p align="left"><strong>
Leave us a message or return to our <a href="default.htm">home
page</a></strong></p>
<!-- The code below is what the Universal Mailer
script needs to function
1) For the hidden field below named 'email_address'
specify the email address that
you want the form to submit it's data to.
2) For the hidden field below named 'thankyou_page'
specify the COMPLETE URL that you want for the thank -
you page.
3) Notice that the form or any subsequent form that
you want to function in this manner must be set to
method="POST"
action="http://www.hostline.com/scripts/mail_form.asp"
The default values are listed below:
Begin form below: -->
<form method="POST" action="http://www.hostline.com/scripts/mail_form.asp">
<input type="hidden" name="to_email_address"
value="postmaster@coastline.com">
<input type="hidden" name="thankyou_page"
value="http://www.coastline.com/thankyou.htm">
<!-- End above default values for universal mailer
-->
</font>
<table border="0"
width="84%">
<tr>
<td width="35%"><font
face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica">Name:</font></td>
<td width="66%"><font
face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica"><input
type="text" name="name"
size="31"></font></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="35%"><font
face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica">E-mail
address:</font></td>
<td width="66%"><font
face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica"><input
type="text" name="from_email_address"
size="31"></font></td>
</tr>
</table>
<font face="trebuchet ms, arial, helvetica">
<p><textarea rows="4"
name="message" cols="48"></textarea></p>
<p><input type="submit"
value="Send us your message!"></p>
</form>
<!-- End form Code for Universal Mailer -->
</font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</center>
</div>
</body>
</html>
What
are the elements that make the form.htm work?
1) the Posting method of your form - in the default
example this value is:
<form method="POST"
action="http://www.hostline.com/scripts/mail_form.asp">
2) the Email Address that you want your form to send
email to - the default listed in the form.htm
file is:
<input type="hidden" name="email_address"
value="postmaster@yourdomain.com">
3) the Thank You Page for your form - the page that
displays after the data has been successfully
submitted - the default listed in form.htm file
is:
<input type="hidden" name="thankyou_page"
value="http://www.yourdomain.com/thankyou.htm">
4) If you want this form.htm file to be posting it's
data through SSL / Secure Server, modify the
form.htm file to POST to the following URL:
<form method="POST"
action="https://www.hostline.com/scripts/mail_form.asp">
Note that you can only use SSL if you are in SSL mode
through your Plan B account and SSL has been
enabled for your Plan B account. If your domain
is not Plan B or SSL has not been enabled, be sure to
request SSL activated by contacting us..
So, if you had a secure form through your Plan B account
the URL may look like this for example:
https://www.hostline.com/youruserid/secure/form.htm
In the code of form.htm, you would set it to post it's
information as listed above to:
<form method="POST" action="https://www.hostline.com/scripts/mail_form.asp">
5) Refer to above information in item 3 to specify the
thankyou page. For SSL, the URL would be for
example:
<input type="hidden" name="thankyou_page"
value="https://www.hostline.com/youruserid/thankyou.htm">
If you did not want this page to be displayed in SSL
mode, you would use the original example above in
item 3 to refer to the same thankyou.htm page.
<input type="hidden" name="thankyou_page"
value="http://www.yourdomain.com/thankyou.htm">
Can
my forms from FrontPage work?
Yes. Just make sure that you publish the forms
using FrontPage's publish function. This
initializes the 'web bots' that FrontPage uses to make
the forms work.
My
secure form isn't working. What's wrong?
If you are using forms in SSL mode, please
contact Coastline directly, as there are special
arrangements that need to be made for the forms to
work properly. There is no fee for this and it
generally takes 24 hours to complete. |