Quick and easy contact form solutions
One of the most important things you can do on your web site is to make it EASY for clients, visitors to you web pages, to get a hold of you.
Make your phone number available... generally you'll find that a visitor to your web site will contact you by telephone only if they can't find the answer they are looking for on your web pages!
One way to make your web pages a two way communication process is by using Forms, you can also set up a social organization via a blog or a Users Forum
The Forms <form></form>elements
are by far the hardest
html element to set-up. It can take several days of constant
work to get a form working correctly. and looking good.
Fortunately there are some quick "Form" solutions...
- You can use a Free 3rd party Forms Generator
- You can purchase ready made forms from a third party
- You can purchase additional software to aid the generation of a form.
Further below you will find sample forms, the forms actually work! Give 'em a try!
Form Making Tips
Make several supporting Web Pages for your form
- The Form Page.
It gathers an e-mail address and name and sends it to you. The user is redirected to a confirm page and/or a thank you page. - The Thank You page.
It contains confirmation and a thank you for joining and a link where the user can unsubscribe. And a link to another location in your web site... There is a tendency here to make the transfer automatic in a too short a period of time... Let the user read the page and make their own choices... - The Error Page
This is a page that displays if the e-mail attempt was not successful and contains a link to the form page so another attempt can be made. (The Huggins' script takes care of this for you) - The Confirm/unsubscribe page
This page is displayed when the visitor requests to unsubscribe. It should display a form button to confirm the user's wish to unsubscribe. - The Unsubscribed Page.
This is the final page, it acknowledges that the user has unsubscribed and that they can re-join at any time. - A Sample thank you / Confirm & Unsubscribe page
all rolled into one. The Thank you / Confirm / Unsubscribe page - Only gather a minimal amount of information. If you are making a Contact form, mailing list form, join a group form or a newsletter form, All you need is their name and e-mail address.
- A password input does NOT make the form secure!
- If you are gathering sensitive information you need to make your web site secure with an SSL certificate. Ask your host if they provide one for your use (they will probably charge a fee)... You can buy a certificate from GoDaddy for $12.99 per year. Your website will then be available at https://www.yourdomain.com/ and you'll see the padlock icon on your web page browser.
- Radio Buttons and Check Boxes
Always put the buttons or selection boxes on the left.
Some Simple Form Solutions
A Free Form generated at the Accessify.com web site
Making the Forms Work
To make forms work, you need to insert into your Form a mailto: e-mail address.
<form enctype="multipart/form-data" method="post" action="mailto: " accept-charset="UTF-8">
But a bare e-mail address will leave you open to spam.
Since you are transmitting potentially private or secure information the mailto: e-mail address should be replaced with a "Form Mail Script"
Some hosts will provide you with a free Form Mail script or URL to use in your own form to replace the action "mailto:etc..." in the <form></form> action attribute.
For example
action ="http://socrates.thinkhost.com/scripts/submit.php?id=2793"
Some hosts provide a CGI script, and a pre-made "mailto: form", the CGI script and Form needs to be edited with your info. The CGI script needs to be uploaded to a folder on your web site server called CGI or CGI-bin.
Alternatives
The textbook
"Build Your Own WEB SITE THE RIGHT WAY" recommends this company at
freedback.com
They let you generate one simplified form for free...
create web form
This company allows you to build more complex forms for free and you can make more than one...
They can store the form on their web site or you can "cut" and "Paste" the HTML/css like you see here... and put the form on your own web page. They also offer spam protection using "captcha" image Verification