Is there a correct way to go about including submission forms onto your site?
I am needing to create a form that simply allows a user to enter their email, and once they have entered it - show them a site that says thank you and we will be getting in touch with you.
Do I need specific software for this or simply just server space to store the data?
This is a common goal of a CGI script or scripting language. This requires some sort of scripting language on the hosting server, such as PHP, Perl, or ASP.NET.
Create the form in HTML, and then set the action to POST the data to the script.
<form method="POST" action="http://www.mysite/myScript.php">
This script file would contain the language necessary to process the incoming information (name, email, etc.), perform some sort of action (say, emailing the data to a third party), and then displaying a thank you page to the user.
Related
I have created a contact form through Wordpress. As of now, I am using a mailto tag, but it opens my Outlook every time. I want to send the contact form to the required email without any client-side action. For that, I planned to use a PHP script by using a plugin like PHP-Execute.
But, my boss is saying that I should avoid using a PHP script as it has bad security implications. Does anybody know what else can I use to send the contact form to my email that does not involves PHP scripts?
What you are asking is impossible. If you want to avoid mailto:, then you must use server-side technology. Because you are using Wordpress, the obvious choice here is PHP.
Your boss's argument makes no sense. Yes, server-side technology has risks. But that's an argument against using Wordpress or even having a website at all. It is not an argument against turning a form submission into an email on an existing Wordpress site.
There are plenty of good contact-form plugins. Use one of those and always keep it updated.
I am attempting to implement the following for my school's website:
School registration is currently a hard-copy form.
They'd like applicants to fill out a PDF form online.
They then print, sign and mail it to the school.
The school want to be able to store the data entered by the applicant in the PDF so that when the signed application arrives, they can simply approve the registration for that student without reentering all the students info.
The school system is run on MS Access (if it matters which version I can find this out).
Any ideas how I can implement an import from their form to MS Access?
Thanks.
I've used a website called www.doculicious.com that does pretty much this exact thing. You can upload a PDF and have it converted into a web form. Whoever fills in the web form can download the completed PDF and print it out for signing. All the data is stored in the system and you can get it out as XML or CSV for importing into another database manually, or use the API to do that part automatically.
It depends on how automatically you want it to be. A fully automated case would be
Scan in the printed form using TWAIN
Use a Form Recognition library to align the form back to the original and find the zones with the information you want
Use OCR to get the information out of the form (probably ICR, if handwritten)
Find the original record in Access
Update the record with the new data
This isn't simple -- there are products out there that could help, but they are not cheap, and ICR is not very accurate.
I would suggest that you just do #4 and #5 in Access and give them a screen where they process an incoming form -- someone keys in the new data. That form
Lets you specify the record you want to update (like with a name or ssn)
Shows you the record with edit boxes for you to fill in with the form data
Saves it back when you are done.
This is straight-forward in Access.
The school can use a regular HTML form on their website and ask parents to submit details online. Your server-side can save the submitted details to your database and generate a unique submission token/key/code back to the parent on the web page. When the parents come to the school and mention the key, print their details on paper and ask them to sign it. You file the paper and the data is already in your database.
If the intent is to import from an electronically submitted form, I have used Adobe LifeCycle Designer to accomplish this very thing. Basically you can create an XML output of the PDF form data using an email client of the end users choice and have the data from the XML file read from the inbox into the fields of your MS Access database. Of course this solution has some serious constraints on what applications are to be used, as well as what use cases are handled, for example this solution is in a controlled environment in which all users are required to email there requests, where possibly your requirements may need to handle mailed correspondence as well.
I would add to VSU's answer by suggesting the use of Google Forms for data entry.
You just need a free account, then use Docs to create a new Form.
It's extremely easy to setup, and the submitted results en-up in a Google spreadsheet that you can download as an regular Excel file (that makes it very easy to import into Access).
You have a few ways to share the form:
Email a link to the form
Embed the form into an email
Embed the form in your web site, which is probably the best solution for you.
Once the data is in your database, you can easily create a report and a simple lookup form to find the name of the applicant and print the form.
It shouldn't take more than one hour to get start and have something functional.
You can always improve later once you've experimented with this.
The advantage of using Google forms is that it's free, it works well, and you are fairly secure since you're not linking your database directly to the Internet (and don't risk SQL injection).
Is it possible to use email to update mysql table?
for example I have someone send email which have today article with the image as an attachment and it have to send to particular email address (eg: abc#something.org) to be able to process data to sql table, other address will not work for updating.
Once it receive, it automatically proceed and update sql from the article it receive.
How is it work?
is there any open source that may help this process
Not by sql, you have to involve some sort of programming language which have a subset of methods to communicate with the database and that can receive and send email.
Take a look at Sendgrid (at http://sendgrid.com): they have a parse API (see http://wiki.sendgrid.com/doku.php?id=parse_api for details) that basically lets you convert an email into an HTTP POST. So if you already have a web page that can update the MySQL database you can just modify it to comply with their spec, set up a sub domain that forwards to Sendgrid and then setup a Sendgrid endpoint that takes any email to that sub domain and posts it to your web page.
It depends on your application. If you're using a framework like Wordpress, there are plenty of plugins available to integrate (e.g. Postie). If you have your own custom application, you may find an open source script to download the new messages, but you'll have to implement your own code to update your database.
I need to create a feature for a website that will allow a user to enter their email in order to receive a free promotion (which will be emailed immediately) and be added to an announcement list. I haven't done any web programming and am wondering where I should start?
Should I just create a database and everytime an email is entered, add the email to the database, then when I want to send out an announcement just write a script that will send an email to every address?
Thanks!
Sites like Campaigner do all of this for you. Why re-invent the wheel.
You could use emailing list software; on a Linux box, that would be Mailman, http://www.list.org/.
Use ASP.NET express. Configure send e-mail and sore whatever you need in the database.
http://www.orcsweb.com/blog/brad/sending-email-from-asp-net-4-c-sample-code/
Im creating a coming soon page for a website im developing, and im adding an option for the user to enter their email address so we can email them when the site is up.
How do I do this?
In order to make a form you will need to use an HTML form to allow the user to input their email address, and then a server side technology such as php or asp.net to grab the data and either send an email directly after the form is submitted, or store in a database or text file for later processing.
You can create a simple email form by following the steps here.
Heres a solution for asp.net.
And heres one for php.
Hope this helps.
Prefinery will help you manage the entire "beta" process. If you are just looking for a simple for tool, look at emailmeform.
If you have programming experience, you could create a database and store the email address.