This service can be used to operate HTML forms that you set up on any of your web pages whatever the nature of the ISP account. This page describes the standard service, which is free to use under certain conditions.
Once you have opened your account you should go to the configure standard service page and enter all the email addresses you wish to use for sending form submissions to. (This is a list of allowable addresses. The contents of a form submission will go to just one address, that address being determined by the way the form is set up.)
You can use the form generator in your account's the configuration pages to assist you in constructing forms or you can simply use the instructions on this page. One account can be used to run any number of forms (subject to the constraints of the configuration possibilities), Mailform Extra forms together with standard service forms.
There is a charge for the use of Mailform Extra but if you only use the standard service and place the Thalasson banner on your site you can normally use the service for free.
You can use the following HTML for the banner, replacing accountcode with your account id or account name:
<A HREF="http://www.thalasson.com"> <IMG SRC="http://qkxyq.com/thalasson/web-form-handling-service.gif?accountcode" WIDTH=127 HEIGHT=44 BORDER=0 ALT="Thalasson web form handling services"> </A>
Below is a simple example that gives the HTML source code for a form that makes use of the standard service. If you use the HTML code of this example as a template for your own form then you will need to modify it where appropriate (for example, replacing 'my-site.com' with your own domain name) and write the HTML code for any additional form fields that you require.
The following description of how to set up a form that uses the standard service, assumes a basic understanding of HTML.
ACTION attribute is -The accountcode determines your account. It can be your account id or account name. Any spaces in the account name should be replaced by points (.) or underscores (_). In this context the account name is case insensitive.ACTION="http://qkxyq.com/thalasson/mailform.cgi/accountcode"
The form must have METHOD="POST"
The ENCTYPE value must be
application/x-www-form-urlencoded.
Since this is the default, the ENCTYPE attribute can be left
out.
The simplest FORM tag, that is consistent with the details
given above, is:
<FORM METHOD="POST" ACTION="http://qkxyq.com/thalasson/mailform.cgi/accountcode">
Your form can have an indefinitely large number of form fields subject to
a limit of 32Kb on the form data sent by the browser to the web server on
each form submission.
All form field types are supported other than TYPE=FILE form
fields - i.e. you cannot get files uploaded into the email.
emailto
TYPE=HIDDEN form field
or a small list of addresses where the form submitter can select one
address in the list.
In any case, all addresses must belong to you (the form provider)
or to your associates.
On form submission the constructed email can only be sent to one address.
All the addresses that you use to send form submissions to must be listed on
the configure standard service page of your account's
configuration pages. (emailto is the default field name.
You can, if you wish, change this name.)
nextpage
http://' can be
left off, and it will then be supplied by the system
(i.e. www.my-site.com is
equivalent to http://www.my-site.com).
Relative addresses will not work.
If there is no value in nextpage then a standard
'thank you' page will be displayed.
subject
useraddr
Reply-To header
line.
(Note that it is not placed in the From header. This may change
in the future.)
username
Reply-To address in its
headers.
email
useraddr.
It is used in the email's Reply-To address given in the email
headers.
You will normally want emailto,
nextpage, and subject to be hidden
fields (TYPE=HIDDEN) with preset values.
To prevent the emailto address being found by an email address
harvester and being placed on a spammer's address list, you can replace the
at-sign with (at). You can also embed spaces in the address.
The system will then convert the address back to the correct format.
emailto must have a value.
The other fields are optional.
If the form contains a field named useraddr and also one
named email then the email field will be treated
as an ordinary field, with no special function, even when no email address
is entered into the useraddr field.
All the field names that have a special meaning must always be in lower case and be spelled exactly as shown.
If any new field names with a special function are introduced at a later
date these will start with two underscore characters
(for example: __specialname).
So do not start any of your own field names with two underscore characters.
The first part of the email body will give the address of the web page containing the form (where this is available) it will also present the information that is available about the form submitter.
This is followed by a list of form field names with their corresponding values.
The email is either in plain text ASCII, or in plain text iso-8859-1 (Latin-1) using a standard encoding (quoted-printable). In effect if any character exists in a form field value or field name which is outside the ASCII character range then it is assumed to be a Latin-1 character.
The precise details of the layout of the email may change from time to time.
Where the form field value is more than a single line of data, the form field will be presented in the format: form name followed by a colon (:) and then the form field value in the immediately following lines.
Where a field name has more than one value these will be concatenated together in a list of values with a comma separating adjacent values. (This means that each field name can only appear once in the list of names.)
The fields emailto, nextpage and
subject will not be included in the list.
--------- FORM DATA STARTS HERE ---------
name: Herman Newtix
email: herm@herman.newtix.name
interests: pom,soc,theol
comments:
Great site
I like your new improvements
---------- FORM DATA ENDS HERE ----------
useraddr field in your form and the form
submitter enters a valid email address then you can send a reply email
directly, using the standard reply option in your email software. But if the
form submitter does not give a valid address or if the address is entered
into a field which the system is unable to recognise then a dummy
Reply-To address will be constructed.
This dummy address will start with the phrase 'NOT_FOR_REPLY'.
This constructed address will be a syntactically valid email address but any
email sent to this address will not be received by the form
submitter.
If you email a reply to the form submission email you should always check that the address you are sending the reply to is, as far as you can tell, the right one. And you should not normally set up an autoresponder to reply to form emails.
If you ask form submitters to supply their email address in a field with
a name other than useraddr or email then,
if detected by the system, this will be used as the Reply-To
address but you should check that the expected form field is being used.
But this practice is not recommended; you should normally use a form field
named either useraddr or email to receive the form
submitter's email address (if you wish to ask for it).
Remember that email is simply being used as a convenient way of sending
you the information entered into the form. The email is constructed by the
script and sent from a Thalasson web site
- it is not sent from the form submitter's computer.
It follows from this that you should not regard this as an ordinary email
sent by the form submitter. In particular, you will only have the form
submitter's email address if they have entered it in the form.
<FORM METHOD="POST"
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