Several techniques are available for parsing forms, but we??™re first going to cover using a server-side CGI script. Essentially, this script collects the information submitted, formats it, and delivers it to the addresses you configure within the script. FormMail, available from Matt??™s Script Archive (www.scriptarchive.com), is probably the most common, and a number of web hosts preconfigure this script in their web space packages. However, FormMail does have flaws, and it hasn??™t kept up with current technology. A better script is nms FormMail (available from http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/ and described next)??”it emulates the behavior of FormMail but takes a more modern and bug-free approach. Configuring nms FormMail The thought of editing and configuring scripts gives some designers the willies, but nms FormMail takes only a couple of minutes to get up and running. First, you need to add some more input elements to your web page, after the form start tag:
?? value="http://www.yourdomain.com/contact-thanks.html" /> Example forms for the sections in this chapter are available in the chapter 8 folder of the download files. THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO CSS AND HTML WEB DESIGN 326 Obviously, the values in the preceding elements need changing for your site. The subject value can be whatever you like??”just make it obvious, so you or your clients can use an e-mail package to filter website form responses efficiently.