rookie email php help

First of all, the script that you found for processing form input and sending it by email is inherently unsafe. It inserts user input directly into the email headers, laying your page open to a malicious attack known as email header injection (Google it).

Sending user information from a form by email with PHP is basically very simple. Each form element must have a name. When the form is submitted, the user input in each form element can be retrieved in PHP variables that use the same name. If the form's method is set to POST (best for emails), the value of a field called "comments" is captured in $_POST['comments'], the value of a select menu called "Rate" is captured in $_POST['Rate'], and so on. PHP is case-sensitive, so $_Post['rate'] won't work. $_POST must be in uppercase; the value of the name must be exactly the same as in the form.

The action attribute of the form tells the browser where to find the processing script.

The following form sends two fields (name and comments) using the post method for processing by processmail.php:

<form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="processmail.php">
  <p>
    <label for="name">Name:</label>
    <input type="text" name="name" id="name" />
  </p>
  <p>
    <label for="comments">Comments:</label>
    <textarea name="comments" id="comments" cols="45" rows="5"></textarea>
  </p>
  <p>
    <input type="submit" name="send" id="send" value="Submit" />
  </p>
</form>

The processing script in processmail.php looks like this:

<?php
if ($_POST) {
     $to = 'me@example.com'; // email address to send the message to
     $subject = 'Comments from website';
     $message = 'Name: ' . $_POST['name'] . "\n";
     $message .= 'Comments: ' . $_POST['comments'];
     mail($to, $subject, $message);
     header('Location: http://www.example.com/thankyou.html');
}
?>

The message is built by joining the content of all the form fields into a single string of text. In PHP, a dot (or period) joins strings of text together. A dot in front of an equals sign (.=) adds the text to the existing value. "\n" (in double quotes) creates a new line.

All this is very elementary PHP, but if you don't understand PHP syntax, it probably looks like double-Dutch.

Try the form and processing script above, changing the email address and URL for the thank you page. Once you see how it works, it should be a lot easier for you to figure out how to adapt the script to your own page.