IFA - Adding Forms

This section is for IFA members that host their website on fine-art.com. It explains how to add order/feedback forms to your website.

Adding an Order/Feedback form...

Introducing IFA's 'Form Mail'...

There are two sides to every interactive form you see on the Internet; the HTML side (what viewers see in their web browser) and the CGI side. You will quickly discover that the hardest part of creating a form is authoring the cgi script to make the form 'operate'. Fortunately, IFA members can omit this step by utilizing a program we have created called "Form Mail".

FormMail allows you to write any form, and as long as a few simple hidden configuration fields are added to the html, the results of the form will be mailed back to your e-mail address.

The Basics...

The simplest use of the form mailer only requires you to do 2 things. First, you must include a line of code that defines the email address that the response should be sent to. Second, you must instruct your form to be access to "formMail.asp" (our script that actually sends the e-mail). The example below shows how to do this:

Sample HTML Form

<FORM ACTION="formMail.asp" METHOD="POST"> <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="mailToAddress" VALUE="you@yourmail.com">

Notice that the form action is "formMail.asp".

The line in green is the hidden field that specifies where the email will be sent. Do not change the name "mailToAddress", but you must change the "value" field to your e-mail address.

Optional Fields...

While the above form will get the job done, IFA Form Mailer allows you to include some other fields that give you more control over how your form is processed and subsequently look in the e-mail you receive. These fields are listed below. To use them, just include a hidden field with the specified name and an appropriate value.

mailToName
The value of this field will be used to set the name in the To: box of the email. Normally, you will set this to your own name, but you could have different forms sent with different names to allow your email software to perform filtering. If you do not include this field, the mailer will automatically address the email to "Form Mail Recipient"