Helloooo.

I'm trying to get some code onto my homepage where you fill in a form and it email it to me. Part of the code is

<FORM ACTION="MAILTO:ramonesfan@yahoo.co.uk" METHOD="GET" ENCTYPE="TEXT/PLAIN">

which I've been told to use. Trouble is, instead of sending the contents to me, it's trying to open up my yahoo account?!

Anyone help?

Originally posted by Ramones
Helloooo.

I'm trying to get some code onto my homepage where you fill in a form and it email it to me. Part of the code is

<FORM ACTION="MAILTO:ramonesfan@yahoo.co.uk" METHOD="GET" ENCTYPE="TEXT/PLAIN">

which I've been told to use. Trouble is, instead of sending the contents to me, it's trying to open up my yahoo account?!

Anyone help?

whichever way you look at it, if you use MAILTO instead of a form to mail CGI, it is going to open your default mail application to send the email. You might as well simplify it and just use a mailto link in the text.

If you need a larger amount of text sending to your email, you will need a script to process it for you - also use the "post" method, as it is better suited for larger amounts of info.

Whoooosh! Straight over my head.

Does that mean I have to resort to cgi, Phanerothyme? It's just a simple line of text I need to be sent into my email account, without the user resorting to emailing it to me. I use FrontPage you see, but my homepage won't support it.

The mailto: command will only work with Internet Explorer... Add to that various other complications..

To do what you want a formmail script is really what's required. This doesn't need to be CGI/Perl... in fact your account will probably support PHP so you could look for a PHP port (translation) of the formmail script to use...

Be warned though... Formmail scripts are notorious for being badly implimented or configured, thus open to abuse from spammers and cracking attempts. As a result you would be advised to talk to your hosting provider to see if they provide a secure system that handles this sort of function.

Hope that helps...

Originally posted by Ramones
Whoooosh! Straight over my head.

Does that mean I have to resort to cgi, Phanerothyme? It's just a simple line of text I need to be sent into my email account, without the user resorting to emailing it to me. I use FrontPage you see, but my homepage won't support it.

yeah you do need a script. Anything else will fire up the users mail client.

Have a look here http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html about the most popular cgi script ever.

You'll get the hang of it in no time!

Ok, thanks both of you. I'll try out the formmail link.

The other thing about mailto: is that it's an open invitation for screen scrapers to get your e-mail address and hence target you for spam.

Would agree with what's been said about formmail. I seem to remember a few weeks ago there was another thread about permissions and set up of Formmail scripts somewhere i=on the forum. Might be worth having a search here as well.

Joe