Can someone explain PHP to me? Options

[Lyniaer]

I'm trying to build a form for a friend of mine. I am the furthest thing from a programmer and I have 0 patience HTML and Java, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. As it turns out, my coding knowledge is so outdated that I couldn't use a simple "mail:to" header to just have the form's information sent an email address. Firefox and IE both have to go and complicate things because I use AOL. I looked around for other options and it seems that PHP is the only way to make this work but I can't find a single website that puts it in simple, step-by-step instructions. It's just a wall of code complicated further by an "example" form and the reader is treated as if they've been coding masters all their lives and picking out what you want and re-writing what belongs to the "sample" code is as easy as blinking.

Bottom line; can someone please treat me like an idiot and detail very plainly and very clearly how to make this work. I've been at this for 22 hours now and I'm primed to kill already.

[joyful]

Hey!

So, if I understand correctly, you are trying to send the contents if a form (maybe some text inputs etc.) to a email address? Is that right?

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[Lyniaer]

Hey!

So, if I understand correctly, you are trying to send the contents if a form (maybe some text inputs etc.) to a email address? Is that right?

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Yes, that's correct. But I just now learned that Yola (formerly Synthasite) does not support PHP scripts.
So now I'm looking around at other methods like Formmail.pl. But those things are also explained to such a narrow-minded extent; as if they assume you already know what you're doing. I'm a hardware guy and I can spank Windows and Mac OS since Panther, but I haven't touched HTML in almost 10 years...so all this isn't exactly Greek - more like Spanish, now.

I simply want a way to submit a form to an email address and I cannot use the old HTML "mailto" tag anymore. I keep finding stuff that's talking about remote servers and create a file on the cgi-bin blah-blah-blah. I'm using a free webhost site and I do not have a server of any kind.

I can't even believe that this is this difficult. I miss the friggin' 90's...

[joyful]

Well... I could tell you how to do this with php... But seeing as Yola does not support php...

Sorry I could not help more...

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[Darin McGrew]

Please see the FAQ entries How do I get form data emailed to me? and Where can I learn about PHP?

Perhaps one of these PHP form-processing programs will meet your needs:
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scri...orm_Processing/

[Christian J]

I'm using a free webhost site and I do not have a server of any kind.

Most paid webhosts I've seen offer preinstalled email form scripts. Free webhosts almost never allow server-side scripts, though.

[joyful]

By the way: I for one do not use free hosts... However, if you are on a budget, I highly recommend zymic (http://www.zymic.com/).
They offer free web-hosting and domains (such as: yoursite.zzl.org)... They also offer free MySQL databases and PHP support... So that is one FREE way you could have PHP support.

Hope this is helpful!