Form to Email Tutorial

Quick Overview:
A very common task for many websites is a form that submits its results to an email account. We commonly refer to this task as form to email. There are several ways to add form to email to your website(s) hosted at AUWEB. You can use Perl(Unix), ASP, or Cold Fusion to accomplish the task. This web page explains how to send email using each of those three popular technologies.

Perl based form to email:
One of the most popular tools for accomplishing the form to email task is formmail.pl from Matt Wright's Script Archive. This script was written for Unix, There are a few things to keep in mind when using a Unix based perl script at AUWEB.

1) CHMOD scripts to 755. Just place them in the cgi-bin directory or any other.
2) Perl path /usr/bin/perl.
3) Some pathnames will need to be changed, since the directory structures may differ.
4) Perl scripts must end in .pl or .cgi
5) $mailprog = '/usr/sbin/sendmail';

ASP based form to email:
At Windows based hosts , ASP can be used to accomplish the task of form to email. At AUWEB, we do not promote CDONTS. For sending email via ASP, we support ASPEmail and OXCMAil. Here is a code sample for sending email from an ASP page at AUWEB.

<%
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("ASPMAIL.ASPMailCtrl.1")
recipient = Request.Form("recipient")
sender = Request.Form("sender")
subject = Request.Form("subject")
message = Request.Form("messageline1")
message = message & vbCRLF
message = message & vbCRLF
message = message & Request.Form("messageline2")
' insert your mail server here
mailserver = "your.mailserver.com"
result = mailer.SendMail(mailserver, recipient, sender, subject, message)
%>
<% If "" = result Then %>
Mail has been sent.
<% Else %>
Mail was not sent, error message is
<H2>
<%= result %>
</H2>
<% End If %>

Please see http://www.flicks.com/ASPMail/intro.htm

Cold Fusion based form to email:
If you prefer to code your pages in Cold Fusion, you can use Cold Fusion to accomplish the task of form to email. Cold Fusion uses the CFMAIL command to send email. The following code could be used within a Cold Fusion page to send email.

<CFMAIL FROM="#MailFrom#" TO="#MailTo#" SUBJECT="#Subject#">

#MailMessage#

</CFMAIL>

Important Things to Consider:
When sending email at AUWEB, the AUWEB email servers will not allow email to relay unless the FROM or TO address in the email is a valid local email address. If your form to email page appears to work, but the email never arrives at the destination, check to make sure either the FROM or TO address is a valid local email address at AUWEB.

In the ASP based form to email example, we list 127.0.0.1 as the outbound SMTP server to use. Each web server at AUWEB has a simple outbound SMTP relay installed. For optimal effeciency and reliability, we strongly urge you to use 127.0.0.1 as the outbound SMTP server in your scripts instead of mail.yourname.com or IP Address. By default, sendmail and Cold Fusion also use 127.0.0.1.

Please remember that our email servers are not to be used as spam cannons. Do not write a script that sends lots of spam. Sending spam through our servers wastes CPU time and bandwidth, and can degrade performance. Any script being used to cannon spam will be instantly removed without any warning.