Form2Mail - Hosting

Form2Mail (also known as FormtoMail or Form to Mail) allows people visiting your webpage to fill in a form which then sends the results to you via email.

If you have a domain name please note: If you want to use this script on your own domain name (e.g. www.yourdomain.com.au), you must first make an application to activate the script. This service is only available if your domain is hosted on Westnet's servers.

Most webpage editors such as Microsoft Frontpage and Macromedia Dreamweaver have inbuilt form handling capabilities. If you are using different software, the two files below will guide you to implementing Westnet's free inhouse solution. It is assumed that you already have a reasonable understanding of forms and HTML coding.

Features of this form handler include:

Required Fields
Sorted Entries
Blank Field Handling
Plain text or Formatted email results
Protection from spambot email harvesting
Debug mode to see exactly what your form is sending
Send copy to user

An example form is available to download and use for your testing. You must download the form and edit it with your email address for it to work.

If you are looking for a basic form that includes name, email address and comments right click here and select "Save Target As..." to save the file on your computer. If you are looking for a more advanced form right click here and select "Save Target As..." to save the file on your computer.
Copy the file if necessary to the working web directory on your computer or onto your web on Westnet's server.
Ensure the one necessary field (recipient) is edited with your email address.
Test the form.

Disclaimer: Westnet provides this script in good faith as a free service to its members. Whilst every care is taken to ensure the script is reliable and kept in a stable working condition, Westnet does not and can not guarantee an uninterrupted and error free service. The use of this script is at the user's own risk, loss of form results is possible. If you are not willing to accept these terms then do not use this script.

Using Form2Mail

It is assumed you are familiar with writing forms in HTML. If you need assistance with the syntax, you may like to use your internet search engine to find HTML language.

The beginning tags of your form should read:

<FORM  action="http://www.westnet.com.au/scripts/formmail/formmail.asp"  method="POST">

One field is mandatory for the script to work which is:

<INPUT type="hidden" name="recipient" value="username@westnet.com.au">

New antispam feature: rather than using the "@" symbol in your recipient email address you may substitute with the "#" character instead eg username#westnet.com.au. This can have the desired effect of preventing email harvesting spambots collecting your email address from your webpage and making you the recipient of unwanted junk email.

Note however that this strategy will be pointless if your email address appears as normal on other pages within your website.

Very Important

Form field names must not contain any space characters
Example:
<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="FirstName"> is allowed
<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="First_Name"> recommended method
<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="First Name"> is not allowed - it contains a space

Input Name	Input Type	Description	Default
Recipient	hidden	The only mandatory field required by the script. This is the email address the message is being sent to. To send the form to multiple recipients separate them with a comma.
Subject	text/hidden	Subject of the email message. Use input type=text if you want the user to be able to set the topic.	WWW Form Submission
Email	text	Email address of the user filling out the form. This will ensure you have a "Reply To" address in your email client program if you need to reply to the person.
Required	hidden	Defines what input fields must be filled out by the user. Use a comma-delimited list for the field names.
Redirect	hidden	Full absolute URL that the script jumps to after the form has been submitted. Use this if you wish to display your own thankyou page rather than the script's built in default.
Sort	hidden	Defines the order in which the form results will appear in your email. Possible values: "alphabetic", "formorder" or comma separated list with all your field names in desired sequence. Note that form order is not guaranteed to produce the same order as fields appear on form.	formorder
hide_blanks	hidden	Determines if you wish to hide non filled form values from appearing in your email. Possible values: 0 = display all fields, 1 = hide empty fields.	1
bgcolor	hidden	Background colour of the default display page.	#FFFFFF
background	hidden	Background image of the default display page. Must be a full absolute URL.
text_color	hidden	Colour of text on the default display page.	#000000
font_face	hidden	Font face on default display page.	Arial
font_size	hidden	Font size on default display page. Possible values: 1, 2 or 3	2
link_color	hidden	Colour of links on the default display page.	#0000FF
vlink_color	hidden	Colour of visited links on the default display page.	#0000FF
alink_color	hidden	Colour of active links on the default display page.	#0000FF
title	hidden	Title of the default thankyou page.	Thank you
return_link_url	hidden	The full absolute URL for a page to continue to if using the script's own default thank you message.
return_link_title	hidden	The word(s) to appear as a link on the script's default thank you page to guide the user a continuing destination.	Continue
formatted_email	hidden	Determines if you wish to receive the form results as plain text or formatted email. Possible values: 0 = plain, 1 = formatted	1
sendcopy	radio button or check box	Allows a copy of form data to be sent to the user filling in the form. A value of 1 will send copy, omission of this field or any other value will not produce a copy.	0
formtask	hidden	Required only if using the sendcopy option. The value of this field should reflect the purpose of the form. Some common examples of this might be order, feedback, holiday booking, questionnaire, room reservation etc. The value entered here will be used in the copy email to build the email subject and certain body text.
debug	hidden	Used for troubleshooting purposes, setting this value to 1 will display on screen all form names and values as received by the script for processing. No email is sent in debug mode.	0
env_track	hidden	This will provide the IP address (REMOTE_ADDR) and the browser USER_AGENT details of the person filling in the form. These details may be useful for tracing recurring spam and only appears in the recipient's email if the "sendcopy" option is used. A value of 1 will enable this feature. Ommision of this field or any other value disables tracking.	0

Please note

The name of your Submit button should be "Submit" to prevent it appearing in your emailed results. The value of the button can be anything you want.

The underscore character if used in field names will appear as a space character for the purpose of tidier error messages for the user, eg "Last_Name" will appear as "Last Name" in a missing input error.

The default value, where applicable, will be used unless you explicitly assign a new value to any of the hidden input names.

Form field names are not case sensitive, however the way you spell them using uppercase and lowercase will impact on how they will appear in any error messages and returned email results.