Form2Email Setup Example

This sample should help you design a form you can use to request feedback from your website.

Notice: This page is intended solely for the use of Sherwood Store customers who wish to provide feedback forms on their web sites. You must be a customer of Autograph Systems to be able to use this service. All other uses are prohibited.
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Use your browser's "Show Source" command to see the code for this form. Select and copy it, then paste it into a file that you can edit to suit your own purpose. Remember to insert the proper hidden field data.

Setup Notes:

The form action should be as follows:
<form method="post" action="http://www.sherwoodstore.com/cgi-bin/form2email.acgi">
(See below for a variation that enables email address validation.)
The Submit button should be set up as follows:
<input type=submit name="Submit" value="Submit">

Validating Email Address Input:

Prevent users from entering improper (malformed) email addresses can be done with the addition of a simple Javascript.
Download Javascript (Or view and save.)
To use the Javascript with your form, you add it to your form page. The easiest way to do this is to save the file on your web server and then load it in to your page. I suggest adding it to the <head> section of your page using this line:
<script src="/path_to/email.js" type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
(Be sure to replace the/path_to/ part of thesrc with the real path to where you stored the script.
With the script in place and loading, all that remains is to call the script before the form is submitted. The two options are to validate when an email address is typed in or at the time the form is submitted. (Or both!)
To validate the address as the user types it in, add the checkemail() command to themailfrom <input>. Example:
<input type=text name="mailfrom" size=40 onchange="return checkemail(this)">
To validate the address when the user submits the form, add the checkemail() command to the<form>. Example:
<form method="POST" action="http://www.sherwoodstore.com/cgi-bin/form2email.acgi" name="contact" onSubmit="return checkemail(this.mailfrom)">

Notes about the field names:

You can name your form's fields any way you want to. When the email is sent to you, each field will be on its own line, preceded by the field name.

Certain field names are reserved names (also known as keywords) and are treated differently than other field names. Some of the reserved field names are required and if they are missing or incorrectly filled out, the form will not be processed. The table below lists the reserved field names, whether it is required or not, and the default value (when it exists) that is used if you do not supply a value. Each field name also includes a sample that you can copy and paste into your own form.

All reserved field names are case sensitive, and must be entirely in lower case, or the default value for that field (when available) will be used.

Note: If you put your hidden fields at the top, the performance of the form will be a little faster.

The reserved field names:

mailto: <input type="hidden" name="mailto" value="yourname@your_domain">; Required. The 'mailto' field tells the form where to email the input. Without it, the user's data goes nowhere!; Important. The 'mailto' field must send to an address within your domain hosted by Autograph Systems. (The ability to send to an outside address would open up the mail server for spammers.) If you don't want to check the local email address, configure it to forward to the address you want form mail to go to.
Alternative: If you want to limit the ability of address harvesters to get your email address, you can break the address into two separate fields...: <input type="hidden" name="mailto1" value="yourname">; Required. The user name portion of the 'mailto' field.; <input type="hidden" name="mailto2" value="your_domain">; Required. The domain name portion of the 'mailto' field.
Note: mailto1 and mailto2 will not work unless both entities are present.

mailfrom: <input type="hidden" name="mailfrom" value="yourname@your_domain">; <input type="text" size="40" name="mailfrom">; Optional. The 'mailfrom' field defines who the email you receive is addressed from, and therefore who a reply email will be addressed to.
(If omitted, a default in the autsys.com domain is used.); This field can be any email address, including the email address of the sender. If you want to be able to reply directly to the sender, make this field a regular text field so the user can enter their address.
Alternative: If you are using a hidden address (embedded in the form) and want to limit the ability of address harvesters to get your email address, you can break the address into two separate fields...: <input type="hidden" name="mailfrom1" value="yourname">; Optional. The user name portion of the 'mailfrom' field.; <input type="hidden" name="mailfrom2" value="your_domain">; Optional. The domain name portion of the 'mailfrom' field.
Note: mailfrom1 and mailfrom2 do not work unless both entities are present.

subject: <input type="hidden" name="subject" value="This is the subject of the email">; <input type="text" name="subject" size="40" value="enter subject here">; Optional. The 'subject' field defines the subject line of the email you receive. If omitted, the default "Form2Email Submission" is used.; This field can be supplied as a hidden field (all submissions will have the same subject line) or any other type of input field. If you want the user to be able to specify the subject of the email, make this field a non-hidden field.

server: <input type="hidden" name="server" value="mail.server.com">; Optional. The 'server' field tells the form which mail server to send the data through. This is typically your email server here at Autograph Systems, but I suppose you could use another if you want to. If omitted, the default server "mail.autsys.com" is used.

mailtype: <input type="hidden" name="mailtype" value="To">; Optional. the 'mailtype' field defines what type of addressing is used to send the email. "To", "CC", & "BCC" are legal values. If omitted, the default type "To" is used.

message: <input type="hidden" name="message" value="Thank you, we value your feedback.">; Optional. The 'message' field is a simple message that appears on the web page after the user submits their data. This lets the user know their data was accepted. If omitted, the default message says "Your request has been received will be processed soon."

nextpage: <input type="hidden" name="nextpage" value="nextpage.html">; Optional. The 'nextpage' field provides a way to redirect the user to a more elaborate page after they submit their form data. Note that if the form is in a frame, the next page stays in that frame. (There is no direct option to target a specific frame, so if you need to bail out of a frame, your 'nextpage' should be a simple page that redirects to the real page and includes a target parameter to the proper frame.); Important: Be sure to include the fully qualified path (http://...) for this value: after the form is submitted, the default directory will be '/cgi-bin/'. If omitted, the user will almost certainly end up with a 404 (page not found) error.; Note: If no nextpage field is specified and no doclose field is specified (See doclose below) a "Back" button is appended to the feedback page. This will give the user an obvious option to return to the page your form is on.; Note: even with a nextpage field specified, the message field is still displayed briefly, so you may want to include an appropriate message as well.

nextpagedelay: <input type="hidden" name="nextpagedelay" value="1">; Optional. The 'nextpagedelay' field determines how long to wait before jumping to the page specified in the nextpage field. If omitted, the default value is 1 second.; This field is useless unless also accompanied by a nextpage field.

emailfeedback: <input type="hidden" name="emailfeedback" value="no">; Optional. The 'emailfeedback' field enables you to also send a copy of the email submission back to the person who submitted it. For this to work, you must have a text input field named 'mailfrom' for the user to enter their email address.
The default value is "No" so no feedback is sent to the user. Any other value in this field will turn the feedback feature on.

doclose: <input type="hidden" name="doclose" value="yes">; Optional. The 'doclose' field enables a "Close Window" button on the feedback page. Use this if you set up your form to post to a separate window (eg: target="_blank") so the user does not lose their place on your site.
The default value is "No" so no close button is presented to the user. Only the value "yes" will enable the "Close Window" button.; If you are opening a separate window, either for the feedback page or for the form itself, you should include this option in order to clean up the user's screen after they have used your form. if you are not opening a separate window, using this option will close the user out of your web site altogether! Use with caution.; Note: See also the note about doclose in the nextpage field.

doback: <input type="hidden" name="doback" value="yes">; Optional. The 'doback' field enables a "Back" button on the feedback page. Use this if you want to give the user the ability to go back to the page they submitted the form from.
The default value is "No" so no back button is presented to the user.; Note: See also the note about doclose in the nextpage field.

logdata (Added May, 2006): <input type="hidden" name="logdata" value="no">; Optional. When form2email processes a request, the data is also written to a text file (logged) in case the mail can not be delivered for some reason. (See the Archive Retrieval page for info on viewing the logfile.); Logging is on by default. If you do not want your data logged, add this field and set the value to "no".

logformat (Added May, 2006): <input type="hidden" name="logformat" value="csv">; Optional. The 'logformat' field controls the format of the data written to the logfile (see the logdata field). Legal values are csv and tab.; The default logfile format is the same as the email format, with data presented in Label:data style. This is not very handy for loading into a database or spreadsheet, so two common alternatives are available.; csv writes the data in comma separated value format in a way that should even be compatible with Microsoft's unique method of parsing CSV data. (No promises with those guys!); tab writes the data in tab delimited format, commonly used for importing data in Mac OS.; Note: If you include fields that allow the user to enter return characters, the CSV and TAB formatters strip those out, replacing them with spaces.

You can make any of these fields editable on the form, but if you do, exercise caution: you don't want to enable a form that allows anybody on the internet to send email in your name!

You should also consider including a direct email alternative in case somebody has trouble with your form. Here is an example:

Please note: Although it is most unlikely that you will experience any problems responding to this form, certain non-standard browsers will not respond properly. If you experience any difficulties, (or if you are not using a forms-capable browser) you may email your response to this form to this address.

This page is copyright 2002-2006 by Autograph Systems and is intended solely for the use of Sherwood Store customers who wish to provide feedback forms on their web sites. All Rights Reserved. All other uses are prohibited.