CSS Form Builder - Help Required

Hi everyone,

I purchased and installed CSS Form Builder thinking that it would greatly simplify my efforts with building forms and it does! I can create beautiful looking forms with validation and Captcha and everything else that I need. Cool - the only problem is that they don't work when uploaded to the server.

I have PHP 5 on the server and the form action is set to POST but beyond this I cannot figure out what parameters should go in the POST or the syntax of how to use them.

Reading the WebAssist help is absolutely no use. I don't know who writes their guides but there is a lot of assumed knowledge, that I just don't have.

So I downloaded the Contact Form Solution Pack. This works and sends email like I want it to, but I don't understand why it does. I need a guru or form-meister to explain some way to get the form that I created in Form Builder to work with the Contact Form Solution.

Words of two or three syllables quite acceptable - not thick - just don't understand how to do forms in Dreamweaver. This is my first foray into the area.

The tech bit - Server is running Windows NT with PHP 5.2.6.
I am running Dreamweaver CS4 on Windows Vista Home Premium SP2

Any assistance gratefully received. Thanks in advance,

David

You say the form works ok on local machine but not on the server.

have you uploaded the appropriate WA folders, as well as your php page to the server ?

eg CSSFormBuilder folder

You mention that things are not working when you have them on the live server, what does happen for you when you try to use the page?

You can edit the form of the Contact Solution pack with CSS Form Builder, you would just need to select the form in DW and insert your new CSS Form Builder form. There is more information about updating your existing forms to be CSS Form Builder forms in the Getting Started Guide that can be found in the CSS Form Builder support page, here is a direct link:

form_builder_gsg.pdf

Originally Said By: Eric Mittman

  You mention that things are not working when you have them on the live server, what does happen for you when you try to use the page?

You can edit the form of the Contact Solution pack with CSS Form Builder, you would just need to select the form in DW and insert your new CSS Form Builder form. There is more information about updating your existing forms to be CSS Form Builder forms in the Getting Started Guide that can be found in the CSS Form Builder support page, here is a direct link:

form_builder_gsg.pdf  

Nothing at all happens when I upload them. I can fill in the details but since I have not been able to configure a POST action, the server does not know what to do with the form.

As stated - I uploaded a Contact Solution Pack form and this works because there is configuration and I can specify an email address to send the data to. This seems to be where I am having problems when it comes to CSS Form Builder - There is no configuration for an email address to send or syntax for how it should be added to the form.

I tried the GSG that you kindly linked (above) but that does not mention how to go about editing forms from Contact Solution Pack.

Step by step deployment guide would help.

Thanks for responding thus far.

David

Here is the direct link to the 'Modifying an existing form with CSS Form Builder' How-To.

modifying_custom_form.pdf

Tell the WA Guys which bits you get stuck at.

There may be a misunderstanding about CSS Form Builder. This tool will not create a contact form that sends and email, it only creates the form. All of the other functionality needs to implemented manually like the sending of an email.

You can edit the existing form for the Contact Form Solution Pack to have it look the way you would like but CSS Form Builder will not do anything other than help you craft a form or edit an existing one.

I too just began using the form builder. I find it very very slow. But it seems to me WA should be clear about this issue mentioned above and offer a solution. If someone needs help building a form, it stands to reason that they are probably incapable of creating a processing script, such as cgi or php or ? to post the form content to.

Does WA have such a script generator?

We don't offer a script generator but we do have a tool that will let you craft an email message to be sent from a form posting or many other actions that can occur on your site. The tool is Universal Email, combined with CSS Form Builder you can create a form that mails the entered values to the desired recipient. We also offer the Contact Form Solution Pack, this is a pre-build app that has a form to fill out and it will mail the contents of the form to whomever you specify. Here are some links to the product pages for these items:

Universal Email
universal-email/

Contact Form Solution Pack
contact-form/

If you have any questions about either of these or experience any problems let us know.

I agree with Jackyboy. You would presume that someone, as me, purchasing these products is looking for an easy way to do things. I presumed that these products would act like wizards - where you fill in the fields etc... to get what you want. But I'm finding that they presume you have a fair bit of knowledge on other stuff.
I thought that form builder would help me create the form and add in where I want the results sent too i.e. show me how to get the results from the form. But it doesn't! It should be called form designer or something.

Getting results from a form is not any different depending on the form. You can use the bindings that are available in the bindings panel to get at the posted values from your form. This is standard built in DW functionality for handing the posted values from forms. The CSS Form Builder will do just as it's name states, it will build you a form that is CSS based. This tool like our other CSS tools is a design tool and is listed this way on our site.