4 Basic Steps to Create an Email Form with PHP Script

Introduction

According to Susan Anderson-Freed, author of the book "Weaving a Website", after HTML, the three other computer languages that can be used for web site development, are (in the order of the easiest to the more difficult): JavaScript, Perl, and Java. Another computer language that is also difficult, but can be learned with determination, is PHP. Though PHP as a computer language needs to be learned with accuracy and precision, it is possible to know the basics of the language in order to create an email form for a web site. After consulting many books and searching online for tutorials to create an email form with PHP, I came up with something which you can also use as a reference to create your own PHP script.

I will divide the process in 4 basic steps.

Step 1: Create an email form embedded in an .html page

The purpose of an email form is for the visitor of the web site to input his information, such as full name and email address, so that it could be sent to the web site administrator's email address. The email form will depend on what service the web site is offering its visitors. One form of service that can be rendered is a newsletter. For this purpose, the following code can be used to create the email form for the visitor who wants to subscribe to the web site's newsletter:

<FORM method="POST" action="myphpscript.php">
<p>Your Name: <INPUT type="text" name="sender_name" size="30"> </p>
<p>Your E-Mail Address: <INPUT type="text" name="sender_email" size="30"></p>
<p>Subscribe to newsletter by e-mail? <INPUT type="radio" name="subscribe" value="Yes"></p>
<INPUT type="submit" value="Send">
</FORM>

(Note: This form is to be embedded in an .html page of your preferred web design. It would be best to save the .html page in the same directory where you intend to place your php script.)

Step 2: Create the PHP script in stages

The next step is to create a myphpscript.php that will get all the inputs the visitor placed in the form, and post it to your email address.

The opening and closing tags for a PHP script are: <?php and ?>

We need to identify well the variables for the PHP script. For this, we will create three lines in the script:

$sender_name = $_POST['sender_name'];
$sender_email = $_POST['sender_email'];
$subscribe = $_POST['subscribe'];

(Note: Don't forget the ";" symbol to close each line of php.)

After identifying well our variables for the PHP script, we will then create a message string, that will format the inputs obtained from the form and post it to our email address.

So, the next three lines in the PHP script would be:

$msg .= "Sender's Name:\t$sender_name\n";
$msg .= "Sender's E-mail:\t$sender_email\n";
$msg .= "Subscribe:\t$subscribe\n\n";

Before this message string, we also can add the following code to create a basic format for the email message the script will process and send to our email inbox.

$msg = "From: My Web Site\n";
$msg .= "Reply-To:\t$sender_email\n";

(Note: Always remember to terminate each line with a ";" Forgetting to do so will produce an error in the script.)

Step 3: Complete the PHP script and save as myphpscript.php file

The whole PHP script in its complete form is given as follows:

<?php

$sender_name = $_POST['sender_name']
$sender_email = $_POST['sender_email']
$subscribe = $_POST['subscribe']

$msg = "From: My Web Site\n";
$msg .= "Reply-To:\t$sender_email\n";
$msg .= "Sender's Name:\t$sender_name\n";
$msg .= "Sender's E-mail:\t$sender_email\n";
$msg .= "Subscribe:\t$subscribe\n\n";

mail("youremail@yourdomain.net", "Website Mail", $msg);

echo "<H2 align="center">Thank you, $sender_name</H2>"; echo "<P align="center">Kindly click the back button to return.</P>";

?>

The first of the last three lines of the script would send the inputs of the form to the email address we specify in the mail( ) function. The subject of that email would be "Website Mail". The last two lines of the PHP script will present a "Thank you" message to the sender and guide him back to the page which contains the email form. In case the sender forgets to input an information, he can always enter again his inputs and resend it to the email address we designate for this purpose - such as youremail@yourdomain.net.

Step 4: Saving the email form and the PHP script

For the email form and the PHP script to work together, we need to upload both files in the same directory of our web hosting account's file manager. We save the email form as a .html file, and the script as a .php file. We need to test and re-test the form and the script until all the desired results are obtained. The obtained results should be: the sending of all the visitor inputs in the desired format to our email address, and the "Thank You" message with the visitor's name displayed in the browser. There is a more advanced way in composing the PHP script so that in case any of the inputs are not given by the subscriber, he will be reminded to input it. However, for a small Catholic web site, the basics are enough. He can always resubmit his personal information in case he does not receive the subscription.

Conclusion

Learning to create an email form with PHP script is very challenging work. First, we need to consider the server of our web hosting account. Then, we also need to learn what PHP version would work with that server. It is really a trial and error process that we need to be patient with, before we finally get that right combination of variables, tags, formats, message string, and other important PHP script details, to make everything work. If we do not give up and go through this learning process patiently, the joy of seeing our work bear produce is the reward for all our efforts. "Patient endurance attains to all things".

Related resources

• PHP Essentials by Julie C. Meloni
• PHP & MySQL by Vikram Vaswani

Visit, search, or subscribe to the updates of this network

Get ideas and updates on basic and small Catholic web site development, blogging, social networking, and web applications from:

• Friendfeed: Provides content ideas from Catholic news and technology updates
• Network feed: Discover ideas on blogging, web site development, social networking, and web applications
• A post at Catholic Internet Mission blog periodically summarizes all the articles and content in the Network feed. To visit, search or subscribe to the blog, click here
• Search Network: Search the network for ideas to write Catholic articles and to post to blogs.

Published Articles Directory

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6