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A
AnnShelbourne
Inspiring
October 6, 2021
Answered

Contact Form won't generate a response

  • October 6, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 1024 views

I created this Form by following my ISP’s instructions (iPower) for building a Form.

 

https://shelbourne-america.net//contact-form-ann4.html

 

 

Although the code seems to be OK and the Form appears to be transmitted when I hit the Send button, it does not get delivered.

 

I would like to receive an emailed notification when the form is “submitted” by a visitor but at the moment I am not getting any response after I have posted Submitting the Form; and neither is the User being directed back to the index page at

https://shelbourne-america.net

 

Would it be possible for one of you to look at the html code in the Form it and tell me what I did incorrectly?

 

iPower says that my htaccess.html is correctly configured.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer AnnShelbourne
    quote

    ... if I can make it work, it would be perfectly adequate for my purposes right now.

    =========

    Sorry to say this in all caps but NO IT WOULD NOT!!!

     

    Your client's email will be fall prey to every email harvester on the planet and exploited in ways you can't imagine or worse, their email and site will be blacklisted for spamming.  Please don't go blindly down the rabbit hole of thinking that what you don't know can't hurt you.   Insecure forms are NOT safe for anyone.

     

    If you need this fast, use a reliable form service and embed the provider's contact form into your HTML document with copy & paste.

     


    Nancy:

    I took your excellent advice; found PHPmailer; edited, added extra fields and a Reset button and reformatted the appearance and the text of the provided form in Dreamweaver; and finally it worked!

     

    (It actually took me all day to figure it all out but that's O.K.!)

     

    You can check-out the result here if you like:

    https://shelbourne-america.net/phpmailer-contact-form/formpage-customised.html

     

    The experts who so genrously give their time to answering our questions here truly provide a wonderful service to us all.

     

    2 replies

    Nancy OShea
    Community Expert
    Nancy OSheaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    October 6, 2021

    Just to clarify, .htaccess is NOT an html file.  It's a server file that has nothing to do with forms or form processing.

     

    If iPower told you to use this method for your contact form, think again.  THIS IS NOT SECURE.

    https://www.ipower.com/help/article/form-email

     

    Whichever contact form you use, it must hide sensitive data in the processing script away from prying eye robots and email harvesters.   Additionally it must stop spam, would-be hackers and sanitize form data BEFORE it ever reaches your server.  And it goes without saying, it must work with your hosting plan.

     

    You have a couple of options.  Hire an experienced developer to set up a contact form and script for you. When used correctly, this one is safe, secure and does what it needs to do on servers that support PHP scripts.

    https://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer

     

    Or use a 3rd party form service like Wufoo.com or Jotform.com where form data processing is handled by their servers, not yours. 

     

    Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
      A
      AnnShelbourneAuthor
      Inspiring
      October 6, 2021

      Thank you for answering.

       

      As I mentioned previously, we are not concerned with Security at all at this stage.

       

      Basically, I am merely creating a new appearance for the basic Contact Form (which the client has used happily for many years) but which was built originally in a table and a frameset.

       

       I just needed to get rid of the Frameset and Table at this stage; and then make sure that the SEND button on the Form still sends back a confirmation email when it is clicked —which it doesn't seem to do at the moment.

       

      I was hoping that perhaps someone here would be able to find what might be missing in my code which is preventing the Contact Form from sending the eMail confirmation when the Send button is clicked.

       

      Yes, I did use the iPower Form Builder, which Nancy displayed and, if I can make it work, it would be perfectly adequate for my purposes right now.

       

       

      A
      AnnShelbourneAuthor
      Inspiring
      October 6, 2021

      Re: htaccess: I do know that it is not part of the page html!

       

      However, if htaccess is damaged or missing, you get a 404 error when you try to send a form. That was my reason for my asking iPower to check that the htaccess in my account was not impaired. Apperently, it is undamaged.

      B
      Community Expert
      Ben MCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      October 6, 2021

      I am not familiar at all with iPower, but if they are providing the form script with their hosting they should be able to provide you with support on this.  Personally speaking that form is insecure and I would not recocommend using it.  I would recommend looking to a hosted solution like typeform or wufoo (the latter offers a free plan with 100 submissions per month).  Or if you are looking for more of a business solution on the backend I would recommend Hubspot.  

        A
        AnnShelbourneAuthor
        Inspiring
        October 6, 2021

        iPower don't supply an actual script — just instructions for creating a Contact Form.

        This Form is for a client and will later be istalled at their existing ISP (and will have Google code attached to it) so, at this stage, Security is not of any concern.

         

        I have put this Contact Form it on my own site for now so that I can test and correct it (because I need to know that it is actually working before I let the client see it!).

         

        If anyone has the time to open the file and look at the parts which pertain to the Send button and to the response links and let me know if they see something amiss in the coding, I should be most grateful.

         

        I did try to ask iPower to look at my code but found that iPower do not let their employees change a customer's code .

        Nancy OShea
        Community Expert
        Nancy OSheaCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        October 6, 2021

        Your web host's only job is to maintain web servers. They don't do web development.

         

        Nancy O'Shea— Product User & Community Expert
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