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Blog Extracts

• Community Focussed Website for North Weald Bassett Parish Council
  28th April 2012
• WordPress expert joins team at Toucan Internet
  17th April 2012
• Sketch Video - Dare to stand out from the crowd.
  31st March 2012
• What a lovely box - new website release.
  21st March 2012

Did you know

• Online shoppers spent £5 billion online in July 2010, with Brits spending an average of £81 per person - online spending hits £5 billion with highest growth since '07.

  Opportunities

  Toucan Internet LLP requires accomplished freelance web developers with impeccable MySQL and PHP skills to join the team. Full understanding of jQuery and standards compliance is essential. If you're interested and want to find out more please contact us. In the first instance please email us details plus some impressive URL's, detailing your involvement in the project.

  

  

Help :: Server Facilities

• Sending Forms
• Statistics
• PHP
• Error Document

Sending Forms

Your website has access to a CGI bin which includes a Perl script for processing forms by email.

This is a simple example of how to use forms with the Toucan server. When you fill in the form below and click submit, the results of the form are sent to the form processing script in the CGI-BIN. There are many different ways you can control the output from the form, including redirection to another web page.

In the example provided below, simply input your email address and the form results will be emailed to you. This field is usually 'hidden' so all email will be sent to yourself rather than the user who is filling in the form.

To call FormMail from your web page use the following HTML as a guide:

<form action="/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl" method=post>
Your Name: <input type=text name="realname" size=20>
Your Email: <input type=text name="recipient" size=20>
URL: <input type=text name="URL" size=20>
<input type=submit value=Send></form>

The Toucan version of FormMail has been patched to stop spammers using it to relay unsolicited commercial email through customer Virtual Servers. It involves the use of a 'valid recipients' file. There is therefore only one valid recipient and that is for example webform@yourdomain. When the FormMail script runs it compares this address to that which the allowed. If there is no match, the mail will not be sent.

Note.The following line sets the email address of the "From:" field and is a required form element:
<input type=hidden name="email" value="sender@yourdomain">
where sender@domain is the email address to be substituted into the From: field.

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Detailed Form Configuration

The action of your form needs to point towards this script, and the method must be POST or GET in capital letters. The available version of FormMail offers many new ways to code your form to tailor the resulting HTML page and the way the script performs. Below is a list of form fields you can use and how to implement them. 

Necessary Form Fields

The recipient field is required for FormMail to work correctly.

Field: recipient 
Description: This form field allows you to specify to whom you wish for your form results to be mailed. Most likely you will want to configure this option as a hidden form field with a value equal to that of your e-mail address. 
Syntax: <input type=hidden name="recipient" value="email@your.host.xxx">

Optional Form Fields

Field: subject 
Description: The subject field will allow you to specify the subject that you wish to appear in the e-mail that is sent to you after this form has been filled out. If you do not have this option turned on, then the script will default to a message subject: WWW Form Submission 
Syntax: If you wish to choose what the subject is:
If you wish to choose what the subject is: <input type=hidden name="subject" value="Your Subject">
To allow the user to choose a subject: <input type=text name="subject">

Field: required  
Description: You can now require for certain fields in your form to be filled in before the user can successfully submit the form. Simply place all field names that you want to be mandatory into this field. If the required fields are not filled in, the user will be notified of what they need to fill in, and a link back to the form they just submitted will be provided. 
Syntax: If you want to require that they fill in the email and phone fields in your form, so that you can reach them once you have received the mail, use a syntax like: <input type=hidden name="required" value="email,phone">

Field: redirect
Description: If you wish to redirect the user to a different URL, rather than having them see the default response to the fill-out form, you can use this hidden variable to send them to a pre-made HTML page.
Syntax: To choose the URL they will end up at:
<input type=hidden name="redirect" value="http://your.address/to/file.html">
To allow them to specify a URL they wish to travel to once the form is filled out:
<input type=text name="redirect">

Field: sort  
Description: This field allows you to choose the order in which you wish for your variables to appear in the e-mail that FormMail generates. You can choose to have the field sorted alphabetically or specify a set order in which you want the fields to appear in your mail message. By leaving this field out, the order will simply default to the order in which the browsers sends the information to the script (which isn't always the exact same order they appeared in the form.) When sorting by a set order of fields, you should include the phrase "order:" as the first part of your value for the sort field, and then follow that with the field names you want to be listed in the e-mail message, separated by commas. 
Syntax: To sort alphabetically: To sort by a set field order:

Field: title 
Description: This form field allows you to specify the title and header that will appear on the resulting page if you do not specify a redirect URL. 
Syntax: If you wanted a title of 'Feedback Form Results':
<input type=hidden name="title" value="Feedback Form Results">

Field: return_link_url
Description: This field allows you to specify a URL that will appear, as return_link_title, on the following report page. This field will not be used if you have the redirect field set, but it is useful if you allow the user to receive the report on the following page, but want to offer them a way to get back to your main page.
Syntax: <input type=hidden name="return_link_url" value="http://your.host.xxx/main.html">

Field: return_link_title
Description: This is the title that will be used to link the user back to the page you specify with return_link_url. The two fields will be shown on the resulting form page as:
<ul>
<li><a href="return_link_url">return_link_title</a>
</ul>
Syntax: <input type=hidden name="return_link_title" value="Back to Main Page">

Field: background
Description: This form field allow you to specify a background image that will appear if you do not have the redirect field set. This image will appear as the background to the form results page.
Syntax: <input type=hidden name="background" value="http://your.host.xxx/image.gif">

Field: bgcolor
Description: This form field allow you to specify a bgcolor for the form results page in much the way you specify a background image. This field should not be set if the redirect field is.
Syntax: For a background colour of White: <input type=hidden name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF">

Field: text_color
Description: This field works in the same way as bgcolor, except that it will change the colour of your text.
Syntax: For a text colour of Black: <input type=hidden name="text_color" value="#000000">

Field: link_color
Description: Changes the colour of links on the resulting page. Works in the same way as text_color. Should not be defined if redirect is.
Syntax: For a link colour of Red: <input type=hidden name="link_color" value="#FF0000">

Field: vlink_color
Description: Changes the colour of visited links on the resulting page. Works exactly the same as link_color. Should not be set if redirect is.
Syntax: For a visited link colour of Blue: <input type=hidden name="vlink_color" value="#0000FF">

Field: alink_color
Description: Changes the colour of active links on the resulting page. Works exactly the same as link_color. Should not be set if redirect is.
Syntax: For a visited link colour of Blue: <input type=hidden name="alink_color" value="#0000FF">

Any other form fields that appear in your script will be mailed back to you and displayed on the resulting page if you do not have the redirect field set. There is no limit as to how many other form fields you can use with this form, except the limits imposed by browsers and your server.

:: More support information ::

©Matt Wright - mattw@worldwidemart.com - http://www.worldwidemart.com/scripts/

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Statistics

Your webspace is has a comprehensive statistical analysis programme associated with it. This reviews your access logs daily and produces a graphical and textural analysis. This is accessible from the index.html file from the \usage\ subdirectory of the root of you webspace. This directory is protected from casual viewing by a password and username which were supplied when your webspace was established. We strongly recommend leaving this directory as is and making no alterations.

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PHP

PHP is a server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language that allows the development of advanced web applications. The PHP engine pre-parses a PHP script, generating HTML to be served by Apache. This enables the web designer to generate dynamic webpages based on user input and/or data from other sources.
By default, version 4 of the PHP parsing engine is enabled within the web server configuration use. 

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Error Document

Should an erroneous URL be entered for a page on your site which does not exist the server will direct the user to a page called 404.htm. You should create this page as part of the website and we suggest including links to valid pages including the main front page.

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