Using CGIMail
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To create an HTML form to work with the script "cgiemail" you will need to use the following form action within your HTML code:

<form method="post" action="/cgi-bin/cgiemail/mailtemp.txt">

This code calls the presinstalled script cgiemail which is in the server's cgi-bin directory once the web page visitor clicks the "submit" button. The script cgiemail in turn calls a text file (or template) called mailtemp.txt (in the above example, you must create a txt file name mailtemp.txt and store it under your /htdocs directory). The template defines the format by which the submitted form content is to be sent via email.

You can create the .txt template in a basic text editor beginning with the following two lines:

   To: username@yourdomain.com
   Subject: Information Request

Substitute the desired recipient email address and subject above. Next, you will need to add ALL field names within the HTML form to the template in a form similar to the following:

   To: username@yourdomain.com
   Subject: Information Request

   Name            [name]
   Address         [address]
   Phone           [telno]

As long as each form field name is contained within brackets ("[ ]") within the template, the email should be sent successfully and contain all submitted data. We suggest you use all lowercase field names within your HTML form and template. If you want a specific web page to load when the email is successfully sent, such as a thank you note, add the follow code to your HTML form:

<input type="hidden" name="success" value="http://www.yourdomain.com/thanks.html">

Substitute the URL of the file you wish to load after form data is submitted. The field name in this case MUST be "success", but does not need to be added to the template.

Note about "required fields"

When using cgiemail, any fields that are to be required by the form filler should be named with a "required-" proceeding the field name. (For example: a phone number field that is required in order to process your customer's information may be named "required-phone".)

Why does my confirmation page fail when submitting my email form?

Be sure to properly code the hidden "success" tag in the form. This should follow the format:

<input type="hidden" name="success" value="http://www.your-domain.com/thankyou.html">

Notice that the url of the confirmation page noted in the value must be an absolute path. If you specify a relative path such as: value="thankyou.html", the confirmation page may return an error.

Also, the name of the tag must be "success" in order to function properly. Lastly, be sure that this tag is located somewhere between the <form> and </form> tags.

Please click here for more information about cgiemail.

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