Advice needed

Dara Robinson

Hi guys,

I'm designing a website for a friend. He is creating a company and needs a website for it. Although the website is going to be pretty basic I have a nice design for it. There are a few things I was hoping for some advice on.

First would be, I'm hoping to up some forms up on the website. This would be to feed information back to my friend. Basically someone wants a service, fill this form in giving us all the info we need and we will contact you to confirm and organise billing once its done. The form does not need to be fancy, simply have a load of boxes I can determine where they go and that the form then sends an email (well the server, you know what I mean ) to my friends company and someone picks up on it. There is no need for Credit card processing or anything like that. It would be good if there was a human verification system to prevent spam. Can anyone advise me on the anti-spam and the form? What are the requirements? Can I do this with dreamweaver? is there some place where I can get it over the net?

Second would be, based on what the requirements are above... can anyone recommend a hosting company? He is going to be registering an Irish domain and I am trying to set up the website so it requires minimal maintenance from a professional. So Window interface would be good and a easy system to use. Also the cheaper the better lol but the reliability, ease of use and that they provide the needed services.

I will probably have more questions later but for the moment that’s it

dinneenp

Forms are very easy to create- probably loads of sites with templates.Here's one that I used for a site I created for abbeyrollers.com-
<form action="http://www.abbeyrollers.ie/cgi-bin/fmail.pl&quot; method="POST">
<input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="sales@abbeyrollers.ie">
<input type="hidden" name="subject" value="Order Form-JOB">
<input type="hidden" name="thankurl" value="http://www.abbeyrollers.ie/thankyou2.htm"&gt;
<table width="339" border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="5" >
<tr>
<td height="38" width="318"> Name: <br>
<input type="text" size="30" name="Name">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="38" width="318"> Company Name: <br>
<input type="text" size="30" name="Company Name">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="38" width="318">Address:<br>
<textarea wrap=physical name="Address" rows=4 cols=20></textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="318">E-mail:<br>
<input type="text" name="E-mail" size="30">
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td width="318">Fax:<br>
<input type="text" size="20 name="Fax">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="318">Phone (include all codes):<br>
<input type="text" size="20" name="Phone">
</td></tr>
<tr>
<td width="318">Web Site:<br>
<input type="text" size="30" name="Web Site">
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td height="161" width="318">Comments:<br>
<textarea wrap=physical name="comments" rows=4 cols=40></textarea>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=left width="318" >
<input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit">
      
<input type="reset" name="Reset" value="Reset">

</td>

</table>
<P>
<p> </p>
</form>

EKRIUQ

If your using dreamweaver(I'm guessing your not) you can create a form to do this or there is plenty of form building programmes out there that should suit your needs and easy integrated into your website.

As for hosting there a sticky above where gives you details of hosting companys

warrenaldo

Have the emails sent to a gmail account.
Gmail spam filters are among the best. They are also kept very up to date.
Gmail will do all the spam filtering automatically - anything left in your inbox is yours.
Then have gmail forward the emails on to the appropriate email address.

Hey presto!

heggie

there is also the likes of http://wufoo.com/ for easy form creation

Dara Robinson

BingoBongo wrote: »

If your using dreamweaver(I'm guessing your not) you can create a form to do this or there is plenty of form building programmes out there that should suit your needs and easy integrated into your website.

As for hosting there a sticky above where gives you details of hosting companys

No, I am using dreamweaver. Ive just not done anything like this in a long time. I'm doing this as a favor. I did the basic design and look of the site. Getting content and graphics sorted now.
Forms and so on are to go in soon.

I'll have a look at dreaweaver to see where it is that I can create a form. Will this then email any address I wish? Do I then need server support for that? If so, whats it called?

warrenaldo

Dreamweaver will not help you with the email. You need to do some server side coding to email info from a form.

An alternative to server side coding is Javascript on your html pages. Javascript could do something like this
http://www.javascript-coder.com/javascript-form/javascript-email-form-example1.html

Dara Robinson

Hi guys, I've got Dreamweaver doing the forum. Which was pretty easy and looks good actually.

Question: What server support do I need to support that form? All I want it to do is grab the info filled in and dump it into an email to someone

MacAonghusa

Dara Robinson wrote: »

Question: What server support do I need to support that form? All I want it to do is grab the info filled in and dump it into an email to someone

the handiest is probably PHP. All hosts (maybe not free ones) support it and there are a multitude of free scripts available which can do exactly what you want.
A quick google search will give you lots of options:
http://www.google.com/search?q=php+formmail+script&spell=1