New Formmailer Tutorial for Net Objects Fusion 10
Description:
This tutorial picks up where Michael Evangelista's fine tutorial left off. Here I will show how to build a basic contact form in NOF that will work with the New Version 4.5 Formmailer script from DB Masters with Spam Control. Before you begin this exercise, you will need to download the formmailer zip folder and extract it's contents. I highly recommend that you read the installation instructions found in the Formailer/Docs/Index.htm a few times to familliarize yourself with the procedure.
Tutorial:
PART I. - MAKING A FORM IN NOF.
1. With the standard Form Tools visible, place a form area on your page. You may use a layout region or table for your form. I prefer tables because it makes it easier to line things up. But use whichever method you wish.
2. Fill in the Form Properties box as show:
- Name: Form1
- Action: the path to your forrmmailer script on server.
- Method: Post
- Encoding: Multipart/form-data
3. Add some form labels and form input fields to your contact form as shown below.
4. VERY IMPORTANT. Don't forget to add a SUBMIT button to your form.
- Name: Submit;
- Type: Submit;
- Value: Send or Submit.
5. The nospam field is a honeypot to trap spambots. With a bit of CSS code we can make this field invisible to humans.
Click the Inside Tag tab and type the following code and hit OK.
style="display:none"
6. Remove "field won't display" text from the 'nospam' field. We used it here for demo purposes. You don't want that in your form. Also remove the 'nospam' label from your form.
Your contact form should look like this when previewed in browser:
7. Name Form Fields. Click on each form field and name it. In this example we named our fields in order of appearance:
- nospam
- NAME
- EMAIL
- PHONE
- REMARKS
- Submit
Remember, scripts are case sensitive so it's easier to use all small case or all upper case letters. Do not use special characters or spaces in your form field names but underscores and hyphens are OK.
8. Hidden Field = config. Click the plus sign to add a hidden field name and value to your form. If you have multiple forms on your site, you can use one script with different config values for each form. Config value 0 is the default or first set of rules in the formmailer.php.
9. Publish your page and upload to server.
PART II. - CONFIGURE THE FORMMAILER.PHP FILE
1. You will need to edit the "formmailer.php" file with a plain text editor like notepad. Refer to the "Index.htm" page included in the formmailer download to configure each line of your formmailer file. It is pretty straightforward, just go through it line by line from the top, and replace the sample info with your own. For this tutorial, we have edited our formmailer.php file as shown below to include our form's field names, email addresses, and optional success page.
// options to use if hidden field "config" has a value of 0
// recipient info
$charset[0]="iso-8859-1";
$tomail[0]="info@yourdomain.com";
$cc_tomail[0]="some-other@yourdomain.com";
$bcc_tomail[0]="";
// Mail contents config
$subject[0]="Contact Form Subject";
$reply_to_field[0]="EMAIL";
$reply_to_name[0]="NAME";
$required_fields[0]="NAME,EMAIL";
$required_email_fields[0]="EMAIL";
$attachment_fields[0]="";
$return_ip[0]="yes";
$mail_intro[0]="The following message was sent from your site:";
$mail_fields[0]="NAME,EMAIL,PHONE,REMARKS";
$mail_type[0]="text";
$mail_priority[0]="1";
$allow_html[0]="no";
// Send back to sender config
$send_copy[0]="no";
$copy_format[0]="vert_table";
$copy_fields[0]="NAME,REMARKS";
$copy_attachment_fields[0]="";
$copy_subject[0]="Subject text goes here for automated response";
$copy_intro[0]="Thanks for your inquiry, the following message has been delivered.";
$copy_from[0]="noreply@yourdomain.com";
$copy_tomail_field[0]="EMAIL";
// Result options
$header[0]="";
$footer[0]="";
$error_page[0]="";
$thanks_page[0]="Optional-Success-page.html";
// Default Error and Success Page Variables
$error_page_title[0]="Error - Missed Fields";
$error_page_text[0]="Required information is missing. Please use your browser's back button to return to the form and complete the required fields.";
// Antispam Options
$empty_field[0]="nospam";
$character_scan[0]="REMARKS";
$time_delay[0]="";
$captcha_codes[0]="9C2449,EEADC8,77A585,D72838";
$max_urls[0]="0";
$max_url_fields[0]="NAME,EMAIL,PHONE,REMARKS";
$flag_spam[0]="";
2. Use an FTP program (such as cuteftp, ws_ftp or even i.e.) to upload the formmailer.php file into the same directory as your contact form. In NOF, this is usually the the "html" folder. Note: you can put the file anywhere you like, as long as the action=" " tag points to the proper path (see PART I, Step 2).
3. Test your Form on the server by sending a few messages to yourself.
If you get stuck, visit the Formmailer Message Forum.
Thanks to Dan Ball for another great script!
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