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HTMLHelp Forums _ Markup (HTML, XHTML, XML) _ E-Mail Form Submissions

Posted by: icanswim70 May 23 2019, 11:17 AM

Hey everyone,

I'm brand new to the forum, and i'm hoping this question hasn't already been answered. If it has please point me in the right direction.

I'm coding a website for a YouTube Channel, very basic layout and design.

I want to have a form a new user can fill out to be added to a newsletter mailing list.

BUT...

I want the user info (name, email etc) to be sent to an email address for me to keep track of when sending the newsletter out so I can keep the sending list updated.

In other words I want to keep a list of people who want the newsletter.

The website I wrote is in HTML & CSS and would like to keep it to those languages

Is this possible without php?

Posted by: pandy May 23 2019, 01:32 PM

Without PHP, but not without any server-side language, not in a reliable way. I doubt YouTube provide such things, at least I have never seen a channel with a form.

You can use mailto. But all that does is that it opens the user's email client with a pre-filled email. If there is an email client and if the browser is configured to use it. That's the main reason why it's unreliable. Many people only use webmail these days - it won't work. Or they may be at a computer at a library or at school or using a friends computer - it won't work.
http://htmlhelp.com/faq/html/forms.html#mailto-form

The best option may be to use a third party service. There used to be a lot of them around, don't know how it is today. But basically you put a form on your page and in the action attribute you put a URL provided by the service All the magic happens on their server, YouTube isn't involved at all, and you'll get your email. This could work, provided YouTube even allows forms in their pages.

Posted by: pandy May 23 2019, 01:34 PM

Oops, I realize now I probably misunderstood, but I'm too lazy to rewrite my answer. You don't want to put this on your YouTube page, but on a totally different site, right? If you can't/don't want to use anything server-side, what I wrote about still applies. It's mailto (don't go there) or a third party service.

Posted by: Christian J May 23 2019, 05:57 PM

QUOTE(icanswim70 @ May 23 2019, 06:17 PM) *

I want to have a form a new user can fill out to be added to a newsletter mailing list.

BUT...

I want the user info (name, email etc) to be sent to an email address for me to keep track of when sending the newsletter out so I can keep the sending list updated.

Perhaps a form is not necessary for this? One advantage with forms is that the user doesn't need an email account in order to send a message. But in this case the users need email accounts later on anyway, so you can send the newsletters to them. So why not just let them email you their subsbription requests (perhaps with "subscribe" as the subject line) the traditional way, using their own email accounts?


Posted by: pandy May 24 2019, 11:20 AM

Yeah, that's an option too. K.I.S.S. biggrin.gif

Posted by: icanswim70 May 24 2019, 12:25 PM

Thanks for the graet info guys, I think you're right about the KISS point, and Christian made a great argument about letting them contact you first. A BIG RED SUBSCRIBE BUTTON IT IS LOL

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