Building a web form to submit results to an e-mail address.
 

This process will walk you through setting your web control panel to utilize the pre-installed scripts we supply for creating and executing forms.  We will assume you have an html web page that you wish to place the form.  This is not a lesson in HTML and forms, but the means to use our tools to establish your cgi functionality with FORMMAIL.  FORMMAIL was created by Matt Wright and the web site provides extensive documentation to help you understand the capabilities.

To Install the FORMMAIL functionality on your pages, you need to do two things:

1. Activate your hosting account for CGI and the pre-installed FORMMAIL scripts in the control panel

2. Build the form in your web page according to the web site guidelines.

1. Activating the CGI and FORMMAIL on your hosting account

A.

Select WEB OPTIONS from your ACCOUNT menu under QUICK ACCESS MENU

Web Options

B.

You will see a full menu of items.  There will be two steps you will need to perform in this interface.  First, under the Preinstalled Scripts, select the EDIT icon next to the "Restore to default" text.

C.

After you select this option you will see a list of preinstalled scripts.  Each has it's own function, we will utilize the FORMMAIL script. Scroll down the page and find the FORMMAIL details.  Select the "Off" button to turn this script "On".

D.

You should then see this in your control panel view.  If you click "on" it will disable the script.  You will find most of the options in this site control panel interface work the same way.

This means that your script has been added to your site CGI folder.  You can flip to your Web Shell Program to check and see if it was installed.  You should see a CGI-BIN folder, inside this folder you should see a FORMMAIL folder and then a file in the FORMMAIL folder called formmail.cgi.

The system automatically uses your url and inserts it into the formmail.cgi file so the file knows how to execute through your site.  (You may also be required to add a file types to let the cgi folder know what types of files it can expect to process.)

E.

You will need to edit this file which you can do using Web Shell.  You open the file to VIEW and then select the EDIT function while in the view mode.  You will be editing an executable file.  Please be careful and read the documentation for Formmail on www.scriptarchive.com.

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Please Pay Special Attention to this NOTE:
SIMPLE SETUP:

For the most simple setup, place any domain name that you wish to send form results to in the @referers array. Warning: This allows those domains to also access your FormMail script and utilize it to process their own forms, but likely this is what you intended anyway. If so, you can leave:

@recipients = &fill_recipients(@referers);  The "@referers" will be the hosted domain name that this script was activated for.  i.e. @yourdomainname.com

Also, Matt Wright (scrip owner) has put in special security based upgrades in the code of the form to prevent spamming and unauthorized use of forms.  You must ensure the domain name associated with the recipient e-mail address and the referers domain name are identical in the form.  Then the recipient e-mail address in the form must match the domain of the cgi file.

NEXT  Building the web form in your page