HTML, XHTML & CSS

Chapter 14: Working with Forms
✓ All the information you need to get an input-processing program up and
running
✓ HTML to include in your pages so they can interact with that program
You can tweak the markup that manages how the form appears in the canned
HTML you get from an ISP, but don’t change the form itself — especially the
form tag names and values. The Web-server program uses these to make the
entire process work.
Several online script repositories provide free scripts that you can download
and use along with your forms. Many of these also come with some generic
HTML you can dress up and tweak to fit your Web site. You simply drop
the program that processes the form into the folder on your site that holds
programs (sometimes called cgi-bin, often something else), add the HTML
to your page, and you’re good to go. Some choice places on the Web to find
scripts you can download and put to work immediately are
✓ Matt’s Script archive: www.scriptarchive.com/nms.html
✓ The CGI Resource Index: http://cgi.resourceindex.com
✓ ScriptSearch.com: www.scriptsearch.com
If you want to use programs that aren’t provided by your ISP on your Web
site, you need complete access to your site’s scripts or processing programs
folder (sometimes named cgi-bin). Every ISP setup is different, so read
your documentation to find out
✓ Whether your ISP allows you to use programs or scripts in your Web
pages
✓ Which languages the ISP supports
Perl and PHP are generally safe bets, but it’s best to be sure.
Sending form data by e-mail
You can opt to receive your form data from e-mail instead of using a script
or other utility to process a form’s data. You get just a collection of nameand-value
pairs tucked into a text file sent to your e-mail address, but that
isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can include a short contact form on your
Web site that asks people to send you feedback (a feature that always looks
professional); then you can simply include, in the action URL, the e-mail
address where you want the data sent:
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