Need step by step for Contact Form

I come from the print design side, and although I can and have built functioning websites in Dreamweaver and Flash, I dont have a clue when it comes to any programming, or writing scripts or whatever it's called these days. I purchased the Contact Form Solution Pack in hopes that it would solve at least one of my problems, but I dont have a clue how to get this thing to work. Do you have, or can I get a step-by-step instruction/tutorial on the workings of this form? Like a "After your download, you will have all these files. This is where you put the files. This is how you change the form. This is how you test the form. This is how you upload the form to your host, and these are all the files you should include." kind of instructions. Obviously I have opened the file in Dreamweaver, and when I "preview in browser" it doesnt work - which I knew that from working with forms from other sources. So I upload all the files to my hosting provider and get errors listing certain lines, etc. etc. My biggest headache is that I cant even view this form, to see what it looks like when viewed on the web, to see what I would like to change. Anyway, I'm hoping to get some help with this simple form before I even start asking questions about the eCart I purchased.

Have you read the guides and 'How Tos'? If not, they are here:

What are the error messages you are getting? If you can upload your pages, could you post a link so someone can take a look? Have you set up a testing server on your computer and defined a site? The more info you can provide, the easier it will be to provide answers!

Lets start with the first one, How to customize the Contact Form Globals file (PDF). In the Quick Setup, I left the first line as is so that it will use my default email server. Then the second part - 4. Locate the following line: $WAGLOBAL_Email_To = "" ;, this line is not in the contactform.php file. I copied and pasted all the text in WORD and did a find and got nothing. The closest I could find was - $RecipientEmail = "".($WAGLOBAL_Contact_Email_To). Is this what I should be looking for? I dont know, and certainly dont want to change things randomly and really screw it up. So at this point I have changed nothing in the file. So then I move onto the "Incorporating the Contact Form Solution Pack into your existing site (PDF)" I am incorporating this form into an existing design (done in tables). I didnt use a template to design my pages, so I opened my existing contact us page and the contactus.php file. I made a new php file, copying and pasting my design as the main body, and copying an pasting the form from WA's contactus.php and pasting it into the cell on the table in my page where I need the form to appear. I saved this file in my root folder on my computer. Then, I opened the homepage of my site, and relinked the Contact_Us button to this new php file, so that when I click the button, I could at least see the form as is, in it's entirety. Not so much for testing, but just to view what I had. I uploaded all the new/revised files to my server (which is just a new folder I placed within my website folder for testing). This is what I get: ContactUs1.php. I want my form to be: Name:, Email Address:, Comments:, Submit. I dont think it gets much more basic than that. I assume I would just go into the form box (outlined in red in DW), select and delete the lines I dont want, save and upload and voila, but I havent made it to that point yet because I cant see what I have so far. I did also try setting up a testing server on my computer, but I dont know if it worked. I used this link: index.html?trackingid=FBTRR. I downloaded and installed MAMP (dont even know if I needed to), but toward the end of the installation/setup instructions it got kinda vague and said I would need Joomla. So I went back to my old way of testing, just uploading the files to my hidden testing folder online. If you could offer guidance/instructions on setting up a testing server on my machine, that would be great, and save me lots of time. I thought this would be easy. Any help you can offer would be great.

Hi Chris,

Sorry your having problems with this. Perhaps it would be best to start by trying to get your form working 'as is' - and then look at ways to customise it to your site design once you have a known working copy.

If you are happy to do it in steps like this, it will make it easier to diagnose problems should they occur later on.

So assuming you are starting with a fresh version with the original downloaded files, The following are the steps to take:

1. In your downloaded and unzipped 'ContactForm102.zip' inside the folder 'ContactForm_GMC', open the folder 'WA_Globals'.
2. Using a plain-text editor (such as Notepad or Dreamweaver in code view) open the file 'WA_Globals.php'
3. Find this line:

$WAGLOBAL_Contact_Email_To = "email@yourdomain.com" ;

and change the email address between the quote marks to the email address you want the form to send the input to.

That's it for the basic settings. You can make additional changes to the WA_Globals.php as specified in the 'contact_form_sp_globals.pdf' (Subject, CC, BCC etc.) should you wish to later.

Upload all the files from the 'ContactForm_GMC' folder to your server, and then navigate to the 'contactus.php'. Submit a trial form, and post back with what happens. We can then look at your other issues.

EDIT: When you post back, please could say what OS you are using, (Windows, Mac) and what software you are using (Dreamweaver?) and any info that may help with your intended modifications.

Thank yo so much for the help. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
This is what I get now-
contactus.php
Looks like the security code isnt working.
By the way, if you go to Home.html, I want the contact us page to look like this (the home page) and just below the nav bar, I want to insert the form into the body and format it to match, with just Name:, Email:, and Comments: boxes. I am working in Mac os X on Dreamweaver CS3. Hope that helps and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Beginning to get there!

One of the most frequent reasons that pages don't immediately do what they are supposed to do, is because the paths to the other files they need to help them work are wrong. This can happen if you move a page without updating the links, and most often, because of the way your site is defined in Dreamweaver.

In your sites definition ( Dreamweaver menu > Site > Manage Sites > (select your site) Edit > 'Advanced' tab, under 'local info', make sure that your 'Links relative to' has 'Document' selected, and not 'Site Root'.

This ensures that whichever page you are viewing knows where the other pages are in relation to itself. At the moment it looks like your page is trying to find the files on your Mac hard-drive, because as far as it knows, that's where you have told it they are.

This will ensure that future pages will upload with the correct paths (!) hopefully. You should check this on any future Dreamweaver site you create.

In the mean time, you will need to edit the 'contactus.php' file to correct the faulty paths that have been created. Look for each of the following lines in your page:

<script src="file:///Macintosh HD/Users/chrisbritton/Desktop/eCart/Contact Form Solution Pack/ContactForm_GMC/SpryAssets/SpryValidationTextField.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<script src="file:///Macintosh HD/Users/chrisbritton/Desktop/eCart/Contact Form Solution Pack/ContactForm_GMC/SpryAssets/SpryValidationTextarea.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<link href="file:///Macintosh HD/Users/chrisbritton/Desktop/eCart/Contact Form Solution Pack/ContactForm_GMC/SpryAssets/SpryValidationTextField.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<link href="file:///Macintosh HD/Users/chrisbritton/Desktop/eCart/Contact Form Solution Pack/ContactForm_GMC/SpryAssets/SpryValidationTextarea.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

<img src="file:///Macintosh HD/Users/chrisbritton/Desktop/eCart/Contact Form Solution Pack/ContactForm_GMC/WA_ValidationToolkit/WAVT_CaptchaSecurityImages.php?noisecolor=000000&bgcolor=ffffff&textcolor=000000&transparent=0&characters=5&width=200&height=40&font=Fonts/MOM_T___.TTF" alt="security code" /><br  />

And remove everything after the first "(quote mark) up to and including ContactForm_GMC/ in each line.

So for instance, the first of these would now look like:

<script src="SpryAssets/SpryValidationTextField.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

When you've done that, upload the page and see what you get. If all is OK, we should be able to help with the site integration.

It is a simple process (one or two steps) to have the form on a page as you describe. Do you want the page with the form on it to have the flv video on it (to the right of the content)?

I did have my site set up to "document", but I think what happened is that I opened the contactus.php from my desktop within DW and then saved it as into my site's root folder, which caused all the links to be messed up. So I basically started from scratch again. I realized that you have to copy all of the files/folders from inside the ContactForm_GMC folder into your site's root folder, not the ContactForm_GMC folder itself, but everything inside it. Then open the contactus.php from within your root folder and make your changes and all the links are correct. Previously I had copied the ContactForm_GMC folder into my root folder, but it wasnt finding the links. Anyway, I have all this done and it finally looks like a form. I can even see the security images and everything. When I fill out the form and click submit, I get the Thanks You screen. The problem now is that I never receive the email I am sending to myself from the form. Here's the link to my most current stage of the process - contactus.php . I'm sure it's somethin simple I'm just missing.
So next steps are - Changing the width and or depth of the input boxes on the form,
Changing the appearance of the security code,
and obviously I will need to format the contactus and thankyou pages to match the rest of my site. Your thanks is much appreciated and I look forward to your speedy response.

Hi Chris,

Re: Receiving email:

Please could you check that email being sent via the form isn't being put in a spam or junk mail folder by your email client? It's sometimes happens to mail sent direct from websites. If that is what's happening you will just need to mark it as not junk mail.

Do you have an alternative address that you could put in your WA_Globals.php file (i.e. Hotmail, Yahoo, Google Mail etc) just to test with?

I have sent an email via the form, let me know if you have received it. Please could you also let us know who your hosting provider is, it might help.

Re: Contact and thanks pages design:

The first step in creating a styled page for the contact form and thankyou pages is for you to find a page in your closest to looking like the contact/thankyou pages you want to create. It's best not to have the flv video on it as people will just be entering details and going immediately to the thank youpage and back to your main content.

When you've selected a page, save it as contact_thanks.php in the root folder of your site.

Edit it in Dreamweaver to remove any stuff you don't need on it, including any extraneous code in code view. You want to end up with the page with just the basic styling you need for your contact and thankyou pages, - the header, menu, footer and content areas.

When you have it as you want it, save it as a template: Dreamweaver Menu > File > Save as Template. In the 'Save as Template' window that opens, give it a description ( Contact and Thanks Pages) and save it as contact_thanks. When you are asked 'Update Links?" click 'Yes'.

You will now have this template in your Templates folder which is inside your root folder.

When you've done that, please could you create a new page from the template (File > New > 'Page from Template' (choose the template you've just created) and save that page as example.php, upload it to your server so I can see what we have?

Thanks

No, the emails are not being sent to my junk mail. I have actually been working on the site all day, and I have been successful with including the form on a design that matches the other pages of the site. I'm not sure what you may have seen, as I have changed it throughout the day, so here's my most current link -

contactus.php

I still need to format the form itself to match with fonts and such, but it has come a long way from the blank page and error messages I started with.

I am still having the problem of the emails from the form never arriving to my inbox. I have used my Gmail and personal email accounts, and still get nothing.

My hosting provider is GoDaddy (where I'm testing), but after completion it will be on BlueHost.

I really want to change the appearance of the security code. It is very hard to read.

You might be interested in this thread:

showthread.php?t=8950

For the Capcha settings:

164/