BlueVoda Forms Tutorial Part 1

VodaHost · #1 07-09-2006, 03:47 PM

Please also read carefully the instructions UNDER this multimedia presentation!

Read Me!

The Above tutorial is Part 1 of a 2 Part tutorial on how to create email forms. After you have watched part 1, Click Here to watch part 2. Please watch both tutorials "TWICE" .

Important Note:

The instructions in this tutorial will allow you to create a functioning form in just a few minutes. Please note that the easiet way to do this, is to use the embedded form processor that comes bundled in your BlueVoda sitebuilder. This processor will alow you to recieve emails from the form. However, it can not at the moment manage file uploads, captchas (image verification for humans), database storing and other advanced features. If you need such features, please use a script with such features.
An advanced script, with many additional features and built in security measures, can be found at the Advanced BlueVoda Form Processor thread. In case you need upload fields, autoresponder, database storing of the info, customizable headers and footers, and, most of all, SECURITY, please visit the above link.

For the purposes of this tutorial, we will suppose that you have already created your form. Now you need to make it work. Let’ s see how you can do this.

When a user submits info through your form, this info is not automatically sent to your email address. It takes some piece of code to do this. Up to version 10 of BlueVoda, you would need to copy the code that we provided here in a "thank you" (processing) page, and then point your form to that page (by setting the so called "action" field).

The major enhancement in the new Form wizard, is the Built In Form Processor. This form processor eliminates the need to copy / paste php code and manually create a processing page. The processing script is automatically embedded in your own form page, and it will process your form info correctly. It takes down to practically zero copy / paste mistakes that have caused lots of frustration to many users. Let's see how this is done:

Double click the form that is now in your page. The following Dialog Box will appear:

Please check (green arrow) the “Use built in…” checkbox and the form action will be automatically filled in. Leave these settings as they are, you will only change them if you want to use another processing script.

Fill in your email address (yellow arrow) . You can change it here if you want or if you need to change it in the future.

Please note the last important field (red arrow): here you need to fill in the URL of the page where the visitor will be redirected after a successful submission. This only needs to be a simple html page, with a thank you (or confirmation, or whatever needs to be) message. However, it can be whatever page you want.

You are done!!

Important!
Please go in Page Properties, and set your Page Extension to be php (when published).

Save your page, and publish it. Test it, it should work right away.

You can build your forms in the clasic way (by dragging a form area in the page, then populating it with all the necessary fields9 or, you can use the Brand New Form Wizard. To see how you can build your form with the form wizard please visit the Form Wizard Tutorial thread.

Have fun!

Please note that you can download the Form Wizard tutorial in PDF or WORD 93 format for offline work.

That’s all, have fun. Post here for whatever problem you might have.