How to add an e-mail
response form to your page

You can easily add a feedback form, registration form or other data-collection form to your page that e-mails the results to a specific address.  Following are instructions for doing so.  This will only work for you if your web pages are hosted on outreach.missouri.edu or oseda.missouri.edu.

Add a form area to your web page. If you are using MS FrontPage, you can do this by inserting any form field. In the "form properties" click the radio button next to "Send to Other" then click "Options."

• In the Action field, type this:   http://outreach.missouri.edu/cgi-bin/outreach/formmail.pl
• Leave the other two fields as they are.
• Click OK then click "Advanced" then click "Add"

In the name field type: recipient
In the value field, type the e-mail address you want the results to go to (i.e. yourname@missouri.edu)
Click OK

You may also add a subject heading for the e-mail message.  This is not required. To add a subject heading,

Click Add again
In the name field type: subject
In the value field, type the subject of your e-mail (i.e. Web site feedback)
Click OK

Click Add again
In the name field type: email
In the value field, type an e-mail address that will appear as the "from" address on the results e-mail. You can use your own e-mail address.

Important Note:  Adding the email field is very important because otherwise you risk not receiving the e-mails at all.  Why?  "email" is a reserved variable in the script we use and the value is always placed in the "from" line of the e-mail message that goes to you with the results of the form.  Due to current spam filtering configuration on the UM-System Exchange servers, if an e-mail message arrives without a "from" address, it will get automatically deleted on the assumption that it is spam.

If you ask visitors to your form to provide their e-mail address, name the form field something OTHER than "email". Call it "email_address" or similar.

• Click OK again to exit the Form Properties

Add  all your form fields (text boxes, radio buttons, etc.) then go back and open the "Form Field Properties" for each element.  When you receive the e-mail response, it will display the name and the value submitted by the user.  It is important to make the name for each field be something meaningful, or you won't know what item is being answered when you look at the e-mail.  You can change the name of each item  in the Form Field Properties.

Text Boxes
The value for a text box will be whatever the user types in. You do not need to fill in a value initially. Example:

Send us your comments: 
name = comments
value=  (nothing)

Check boxes and radio buttons
Users will click on a check box or button next to a label. If there are several options, they will all be grouped together by having the same name, but the values will be differeng. Here is an example:

Is the navigation in our site intuitive?   Yes    No

First button,  name = navigation  value = yes
Second button, name = navigation  value = no

This script is from Matt's Script Archive. For the complete list of options available with this script, refer to the Readme File.   Disregard the section called "Setting Up the FormMail Script" -- it is already done.

Also see:  Adding a subject to your mailto links

 

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		Kate Akers  akersk@missouri.edu Last revised: 12/12/06