Built For Designers & Developers

Email: Create a Contact Form using Formmail

In this article, we will show you how to setup and configure Form Mail, a perl based email script that is an excellent alternative to cPanel’s FormMail scripts. It will allow you to have the results of html forms sent to you via email.

For this article, you will need to know basic html, and ftp.

1) Download the newest copy of the Form Mail script from http://www.scriptarchive.com/download.cgi?s=formmail

2) Unzip the archive and open the FormMail.pl file using your preferred text editor (e.g. notepad).

3) Edit the following settings located at the top of the file…

locate:

$mailprog = '/usr/lib/sendmail -i -t';

… and replace with:

$mailprog = '/usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t';

Now locate:

@referers = ('scriptarchive.com','72.52.156.109');

… and replace with:

@referers = ('yourdomain.com');

Note: Make sure that you replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Once you have made the changes, save the file.

4) Using FTP, upload the saved file from step 3 to the cgi-bin for your website (normally found at public_html/cgi-bin).

5) Still using FTP, change the permissions of the FormMail.pl file to allow it to be executable (e.g. 0755). For more information about permissions and CHMOD, please click here.

6) Open the file you wish to place the contact form on and paste the following code.

<form id=”contact” name=”contact” method=”POST” action=”/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl”>

<label>Your Email: </lable><input type=text name=”email” /><br />
<label>Subject: </lable><input type=text name=”subject”/><br />
<label>Message: </lable><textarea name=”body” id=”body” cols=”45″ rows=”5″></textarea><br />

<input type=hidden name=”recipient” value=”[email protected]” />
<input type=hidden name=”redirect” value=”http://yourdomain.com/thankyou.html“/>
<input type=”submit” name=”button” id=”button” value=”Send” />

</form>

Now we will cover what each line does…

<label>Your Email: </lable><input type=text name=”email” /><br />

This line is where they would input their email so you can reply to them.

<label>Subject: </lable><input type=text name=”subject”/><br />

This gives them the option to input a subject for their email.

<label>Message: </lable><textarea name=”body” id=”body” cols=”45″ rows=”5″></textarea><br />

Here is where they can type a message.

<input type=hidden name=”recipient” value=”[email protected]” />

This is where the email will be sent. Please keep in mind that the domain for the email must be in the @referers section of line 3.

<input type=hidden name=”redirect” value=”http://yourdomain.com/thankyou.html“/>

This line allows you to change where they are redirected after the email has been sent. For example, you could redirect them to a “Thank You” page letting them know their email was sent.

<input type=”submit” name=”button” id=”button” value=”Send” />

This is the button that sends the form. You can change the button text by modifying the value.

That’s it! You now know how to use Form Mail. For more detailed information about what you can do with this form processeser, please read the README file located in the zip file downloaded in step 1. Remember to change the items in bold above to fit your needs.