Troubleshooting Muse Form Widgets Used on Third-Party Servers

Report · Jun 11, 2013

When you build websites in Muse you can add Form widgets to pages to allow visitors to submit messages to a specific address via email. In previous versions of Muse, the Form widgets only worked on sites that were hosted on the Adobe Business Catalyst servers. However, this limitation has changed. You can now add Form widgets to pages that are published using third-party hosting providers.

When you upload sites to servers other than the Adobe Business Catalyst servers, there are some server requirements and best practices to consider. Keep in mind that when you publish trial sites, they are hosted on the Business Catalyst servers. Always test the content on your live site after publishing the site to other hosts to confirm that the site features continue to work as expected.

The following list answers common questions regarding Form widgets, as well as providing tips for troubleshooting issues.

What is the workflow for adding Forms widgets to sites hosted on a third-party server?

Create a new site and drag the Form widgets to the page. Follow the normal process to position the form in the site design, configure the options in the Options panel, and use the panels in Muse to style the appearance of the form within the Muse workspace. When the site is ready to go live, use the FTP Upload feature within Muse. Or use the Export HTML feature to save a copy of the entire site folder, and use a third-party FTP client to upload all of the site files to the host servers of your choosing.

Are there any server-side requirements for Muse Form widgets to work?

Yes. Your web host must support PHP, and the PHP mail service must be properly configured to send email messages. If you use the FTP Upload feature within Muse, Muse will attempt to warn you if it detects that your web host does not meet these requirements.

Are there any Form widget features that only work when a website is hosted on the Adobe Business Catalyst hosting servers?

Yes. The CAPTCHA field only works if hosting on the Adobe Business Catalyst servers. However, all the other form features work on most hosting providers that support PHP.

Do the Form widgets in Muse include logic to limit spam form submissions?

Yes. On most hosting providers, Muse forms limit the rate of form submissions from a single IP address.

When I use the FTP Upload feature to upload my site to my hosting provider, Muse displays a warning that says the Form widgets may not work. Why won't they work?

Some web hosts don't support everything Muse Form widgets need to work.

When you upload to your host using the FTP Upload feature in Muse, logic in the service attempts to determine if everything is configured properly on your host provider's servers. If not, Muse displays a warning with information about the missing requirements. You can contact your web-hosting provider and ask them to fix the configuration problem.

How can I check if my hosting provider has the required technology enabled for my website?

After uploading your Muse site containing a form, you can point your browser to your-site-address.com/scripts/form_check.php

If your website supports everything needed for Muse forms to work properly, you should see 3 green checkmarks on this page. If not, contact your hosting provider. They should be able to look at the php code for this file and determine what configuration changes need to be made on your server for Muse PHP forms to work properly.

I've uploaded my new Muse form, and tried submitting it in the browser, but I never receive an email with the form data. What's wrong?

This could be caused by a few different problems. Follow these troubleshooting steps:

1. Check your email Inbox spam folder. Mark the form messages as non-spam.

2. Some hosting providers refuse to send mail to an email address on a different site's domain. For example, if your website is www.example.com, but your form is configured to send email to someone@email.com, your web host provider may refuse to send the email generated by the Form widget.

Solutions:

Update your form to send email messages to someone@example.com. This change may resolve the issue and allow the messages to go through.
If you're hosting is GoDaddy and you're form e-mail address is to a non-GoDaddy e-mail account, you'll need to enable "remote" mail in cPanel. (A similar change may be required on other hosting providers.)

Navigate to your cPanel on GoDaddy. This is where you manage your web hosting.
On the main cPanel page, scroll down to where it says ":::Email"
Click on "MX entry" which is located right below "Accounts". This is the Mail Exchanger setting. By Default, GoDaddy assumes you will be using a GoDaddy email account.
Make sure that "Remote Mail Exchanger" is turned on.

By default GoDaddy assumes you will be hosting your e-mail through GoDaddy. If you set up an email address for your form in Muse that is not a GoDaddy hosted email address, then GoDaddy does not accept it by default. You have to give GoDaddy permission to send a form to what GoDaddy considers a "remote" email address.

3. Some IT Departments block emails from someone@bigcompany.com to someone_else@bigcompany.com if the email message isn't sent by the standard bigcompany.com mail servers.

Try changing the form's options to add another email address (listed first), which does not end with: @bigcompany.com. This change may allow the form messages to be delivered to both email addresses.

4. Visit http://my-site.com/scripts/form_check.php in a web browser and make sure you see all green checkmarks. If some items do not display green checkmarks that means that the hosting server is not configured correctly to allow the Form widgets to send email messages to the address you've specified.

Contact your web-hosting provider about the server configuration problem. Describe the items that are not marked as green in the form check page, so that they can help you set up the servers to use the correct settings.

If you continue to encounter issues with Form widgets that are published to third-party hosting servers, post a message on the Muse Support Forums. The Muse team reads these messages and the online community can help you resolve issues with forms.

Report · May 29, 2014

I agree. Making sites that only function on their hosting is a bad strategy. I was loving muse but they act as if every host should have WIDE OPEN php sendmail options.

in todays climate no decent host is going to want to leave it that unprotected.

I'm paid for a year in full but after that if this doesn't work I will have a tough choice...

Report · Jul 03, 2014

I contacted my hosting company and they were able to assist me with running the test, however only two of the three listed items receive check marks. It shows that there was a SQL configuration problem. My host showed no logs on what the issue related to so they were unable to determine/fix the problem. How can I resolve this?

Report · Jul 03, 2014

Same with me. Apparently the requirements of adobe muse contact form is SQLite version 1 or 2 but my hosting server runs SQLite3.

If the server is running SQLite 3, however adobe muse contact form works, but Muse form spam filtering does not work on SQLite 3.

Ask your provider what version of SQLite they are running? maybe they are able to install the earlier versions although this may not be possible depending what plan you have. May need to change. Although I am sure that Adobe will fix this SQL version problem in the next version, I hope??

Report · Jul 05, 2014

GREAT PROBLEM! Sometimes i need to delete email field from form. So user should enter only phone and name. Muse doesn't let us to delete it in programm so I make it in 2 ways.1) Delete this field from code in index.html. 2) With special widget. BUT YESTERDAY i did new website and found that forms with deleted e-mail fields don't come to my e-mail! Also old forms looks like don't come! This mean that all websites i made for people don't work! Have u change algoritms in forms? Pls fix this, because this problem destroys the great number of websites.

I tryed download website on 2 different hostings. If u have information tell every thing pls!

Report · Jul 06, 2014

I wonder of a third party plugin, say via the insert HTML option in Muse, would be an option to have on site submission forms working flawlessly on third party hosts?

There are cloud solutions which would do this (site on Adobe host, form on cloud host) (or, site on third party server, form on cloud host) but how about single server solution?

Report · Jul 06, 2014

I use Muse for one thing. FAST graphical UI development. I hate Photoshop always have. Muse is the GUI functionality that Dreamweaver used to have but no longer does. Most of my Muse sites are one page old school in that they "look" like traditional 8-10 individual page websites but in reality they consist of a single Muse page. NOT a vertical one page site. I do NOT use Be. It is far to limiting and restricted for someone like myself. I pull the Muse code down to html, tweak the form action to go to either the simplest of ASPMail functionality OR to ASP/.NET/PHP/whichever is most appropriate prior to triggering API calls.

I tried the HTML insert.......

Adobe and other software companies are building their software so that it is only intended to work ONE WAY and that is in an environment that they have control over in order to eliminate support issues with limited functionality software code. UNLESS you want to haunt the user forums .... or PAY for them to provide advanced support for the software that you pay them a fee to use.

I've never had issues but once with Muse Forms. Once I took the site off Be, tweaked the form action and put it on one of my client GoDaddy sites I haven't had any issues. Of course by the time I roll out a form that I started in Muse, it has little if any resemblance to the html that Muse exported. IN fact lately I've been using Muse to provide the "themeing" for jQuery UI widgets in order to get a decent look. Works pretty good too. Just built a really nice modal this afternoon. Nothing like what jquery UI or their "themeroller" provides for.

I'm currently building out a POC that is fairly extensive. It uses jQuery, jQueryUI,, ASP, .NET, Angular, Knockout and Visual C++.... I'm using Muse because, even though I can draw very will in charcoal. I can't use Photoshop for squat. I do not use Muse as a software package. I use it like I do other Adobe CC's.... as a component functionality. When I roll out sites/apps that I started I started in Muse, it had better work on a wide variety of platforms because I'm never always sure which web server/db or os might end up being involved.

DIY isn't always as cost effective as we hope it will be. I know from experience.

FYI - When you export Muse to html it will rewrite ALL of the code for its Muse site unless you have specified for it to NOT include that page or pages in the export. If you export directly to your server you are SOL because you just overwrote all your site code changes, customizations and content on the pages that Muse just overwrote when you exported directly onto your live production site.

Word to the wise - NEVER export directly to your live production server. Pull it down locally into a DIFFERENT version directory. Compare/Review for actual changes and ONLY upload the pages necessary and relative to the changes you made.

Best of luck. Send me an email and if I have time I'll be happy to get back with you, usually the next day.

Creative Strategy Guy - tomorrow.

Report · Jul 06, 2014

Mine seemed to clear up after I downloaded some other forms - from a company that makes forms for dental offices. For some reason, I didn't have all of the code to begin with, but, by the time we were done, it appeared. . .

Who knew?

Report · Jul 09, 2014

I am having a huge problem: I am working on a website for a client who has one the new .training domains.
a) Muse doesn't accept an email address with .training and claims I am trying to use "multiple email addresses"

and

b) When I am changing the email address in TextEdit to .training the whole things doesn't work.

What am I doing wrong?

Report · Jul 09, 2014

ACUGWM - nothing. The field you are typing the email address into......... in an application like Muse there would code that refers to a hard coded list of all the valid domain extensions so that when you enter the email address it checks to see if what you entered was valid. If that extension has not been added to the code yet then you wont be able to use that email address without exporting the code and changing the email address to the one you want to us with the .training extension on it.

Not sure what you mean by item "b)". But I suspect that whatever you are doing in "TextEdit" is being rejected by the same Muse validation code. If you would like to expand further on what you mean by "b)" I'll take a look at it. I'm working in Muse today anyway.

Welcome to Muse....... all you can do is to either set up a dummy email account that uses one of the more common email extension. .co, .com, .net........ then go into that email client and setup a "forwarding" rule to forward the incoming emails to the .training email address. Muse may get it fixed quickly or not, no way to know. So the above is about your chance at a "workaround".

Angela

Report · Jul 09, 2014

Please see comment added on the board.

Thank you!

Angela

Report · Jul 09, 2014

Hello, Angela - first of all: Thanks so much for the reply.

Is there any way in which I can insert the correct email address in the HTML/PHP/whatever code so that it might work?

Of course I have the whole CC at my disposal.

The work-around you suggested is not possible because this is not for me but for a client who will use this email address.

I am reachable via Skype: communi-co.

Thanks so much.

Report · Jul 09, 2014

Not if you are uploading Muse to Be. If you are uploading to Be like that then you won’t have access to the html.

HOWEVER………

IF BIG IF…………..

you will be exporting the Muse page(s) to .html, then providing the client with the .html files then “yes” it can be fixed.

1.) You can download Dreamweaver but unless you are familiar with it or another upper level coding software it might be better for you to take the Notepad route. Either way here’s how you fix it:

a. Enter your email address into the form settings in Muse.

b. Save the site

c. Export the Muse site to .html

d. Save to a local folder on your system.

e. Open Notepad or an html editor

f. Search for the email address you entered in the form settings in Muse

g. Delete JUST the email address and replace it with the correct one.

h. IF using Notepad then:

i. Save as:

1. The file name with the .html extension do NOT use the .txt extension!!!

i. IF using an html editor just do a “Save”.

IF YOU TRY TO UPLOAD BACK TO MUSE you will not be able to AND IF YOU MAKE ANY EDITS ON THAT SAME PAGE IN MUSE YOU WILL LOOSE YOUR CHANGE………….. until such time that Adobe adds the .training email extension.

Best of Luck!

Angela

Report · Jul 17, 2014

Hello, Angela,

I have resolved the problem manually.

With my old and dormant knowledge of Pascal, C+ and (yes, laugh off... ) FORTRAN 77 I've looked into the PHP-Files and the Java Scripts in the "Scripts" folder.

I was looking for any references on the DNS and Email-Server.

I found out that only the "form" PHP Files are containing references to the email address.

Because I knew that changing the code in a text editor might jumble up the code, I've opened them in Dreamweaver and saved the changes out of Dreamweaver.

I simply exchanged the email address in the "form" Script File with the .training address.

The only things to be noted:

If you are updating from Muse, you have to take good care that you don't choose the option to replace all files, but only update the changed pages' assets. If the Contact PÜage (or any other page with your email form on) is uploaded by Muse, the wrong email address will be in the PHP file!
If you need to update the page which contains the form, you have to export the HTML Files and have to re-do the changes manually in Dreamweaver.
MUSE Updates are having the effect that any upload-override (only updated pages) is changed again and all files will be updated (a bug in the last MUSE update!!). So after an update - and a change in your page(s) - you should export the HTML Files and check the code for wrong email addresses.

Bt otherwise: it works!

Report · Jul 17, 2014

:o) You are spot on. What you did was exactly what would have to be done in your situation. I don’t laugh at coding knowledge, I can add even binary to my list of languages. There is value in old school knowledge!

One thing that I have been doing in addition is if I do any updates in Muse then when I do the export of the bare minimum files, I will put those exported files into a separate folder locally. A lot of times you can get away with making your edits to that newly exported file and copying it out to your existing site. That lowers the odds of Muse trashing your other files as well.

Best of Luck!

Report · Nov 14, 2014

It looks like you know what you're talking about So I hope you can help me as well.

I've created a site in Muse with a template I bought on Envato. I want to use this for my free partner site. However, I don't have a paid partner plan so I can't use the 'publish to ABC' option in Muse. I CAN sync with html and so I did.

I used Filezilla to first delete all the files and folders, at least the ones I could delete, from the free trial site content (they get you a basic setup site) and then copied all the files/folders of Muse into the site. Everything looks great when checking the site online, however: I get the 'PHP script is missing or PHP is not correctly on your server....etc' error on the forms I've created in Muse.

The weird thing is: I'M USING BC AS A HOSTING PROVIDER, so what's up with this??

Any tips?

Report · Nov 14, 2014

If you're using BC as a hosting provider, you should use the 'publish' option in Muse. It will allow you to publish to a free temporary BC as well as a paid BC site.

If you export to a local folder or use Muse's FTP upload, the forms are built using PHP. BC doesn't support PHP, but does support an alternate method for handling forms. When you publish to BC, Muse generates forms in a different way that works on BC.

Report · Oct 12, 2014

I'm having some of the same issues i see other people having, I've created a site in muse and have a contact form on my contact page, it is hosted through go daddy. The form lets the information submit but i never receive an email with that information. Ive called go daddy and they say everything is fine on their side of things and that their is not database connected with my site. also they ran the php test adobe said to and it shows an sql configuration error. I need to fix this asap! There has to be a way in muse itself to fix it without digging into the code. Without a contact form a website is virtually useless.

Report · Oct 12, 2014

choperz13 have you checked whatever spam prevention your e-mail system uses? The form messages are commonly incorrectly quarantined by spam prevention systems.

Report · Oct 12, 2014

Yes i have checked it has to do with the sql configuration or lack of.

Report · Oct 12, 2014

No, actually it definitely does not have to do with the SQL configuration. Having SQL configured is optional. The form will work fine without it. If available, SQL is used to reduce spam. The best way to eliminate form spam is to use a reCaptcha.

If PHP and Mail are ok, then the common issues are the hosting provider requiring the e-mail address be on the same domain as the site, the hosting provider having other restrictions on mail sending, or the message being caught by a spam filter.

Report · Oct 12, 2014

The email is from my hosting provider and ive checked with them and everything on their end is good

Sent from my iPhone

Report · Oct 12, 2014

They also stated their was no database associated with the site and to check with adobe to see if their was a way around that

Sent from my iPhone

Report · Nov 30, 2014

I have spent hours talking with (mt) Media Temple and have exactly the same issues. Media temple finally washed there hands ad said this is a topic for the Adobe Forums.

Had the same green lights at the php-check address (mt) said the emails are being sent to the correct email address etc, etc but the matter of the fact is that it's a 3rd party application that simply doesn't work on any other web hosting server than BC.

Adobe have absolutely no incentive to fix the problem as it's simple commerce and they would lose business. So unless some one here let's the cat out the bag and divulges what's wrong with the scripts then I give up.

Have to find a manual way to add web forms without Adobe Widgets.

Super disappointed, wasted the best part of the morning on this rubbish.

Report · Dec 01, 2014

Paul Hitchman, the reality is there are many many more Muse sites hosted on non-Adobe hosting than there are hosted on Business Catalyst and many many of them use forms. It would not be in our best interest to discourage use of third party hosting. In fact we've spent much of the past year making changes to ensure the features available to your are the same regardless of whether you elect to host with Adobe or elsewhere. However, there are an endless number of different configurations of third party hosting in the wild, so in some case it may take extra effort to get everything appropriately configured and in rare case a hosting provider may simply not provide what's required (though that's not the case with Media Temple).

Rather than posting here where your message may be lost in the comments on the FAQ, please provide more details for what you're encountering and the URL of your site as part of a post in the Muse forum <https://forums.adobe.com/community/muse/adobe_muse_bugs>. Thanks.

Report · Dec 01, 2014

Thank you Zak!

I'm a graphic designer and plan to move several web sites to the GRID on (mt) after watching a tutorial from a MUSE developer who claimed (mt) was the best route for designers.

So after contacting (mt) Sales and asking the question "do you support Adobe MUSE Form Widgets", getting the green light. Simply to find they don't work is -EXTREMELY- frustrating.

In a frantic panic I hit the 'AFG' button and found this site where the only pleasure was to hear I'm not the only one having problems.

Since then I've spent frustrating chat sessions with (mt) support who simply say the forms seems to be working and we have no idea why the emails aren't getting through -contact Adobe.

I'm a graphic designer, not a coder hence MUSE over Dreamweaver.

Thanks for the MUSE URL -I'll voice my problem there and try to fix it.

So thanks Zak, but try and understand the frustration when I double checked before taking the jump over to (mt).

One question -why do you seem to be on the side of (mt)? Please tell, as support couldn't tell me if they have websites running Form Widgets.

Adobe Community

Troubleshooting Muse Form Widgets Used on Third-Party Servers