Website Forms

Forms are a very powerful way of gathering information and interacting with your web site's visitors. The two most common website forms used are the contact form and the newsletter form. Forms consist of two main components:

• A Visible component - the HTML document which contains the actual form itself.
• An invisible component - A form handler that is responsible for processing the form.

Location of Components.

The form and form handler can be located in several locations. Either on your website, a remote website or a combination of the two.  The diagram below show the 3 possible scenarios.

• Scenario 1- The form and form handler are located on the same server as the web page (your host).
• Scenario 2- The form is on the same server as the web page (your host) but the  form handler is located on a remote host.
• Scenario 3- The web page is located on your host and contains a link to the form which is located on a remote host along with the form handler.

The Form handler

This is some form of script or program whose job is to validate and  extract the user data from the form and either email it to you or store the data in a database for later use.

Many Hosting providers provide server based scripts that will do this. There are many third party sources of basic forms available for those whose host doesn't provide them (see below). The host must however provide support for scripts.

For those whose hosts either do not support scripts or the scripts and inadequate then you can also use remote hosted forms.

Remote Hosted Forms and form Handlers.

In the early days of the web remote form hosting was common because not many hosts allowed the use of server side scripting and/or it was only available in the more expensive packages.

Although server side scripting is commonly available remote form hosting is still used because it allows more choice. For example I use 1&1 and php scripts are supported and the package has built in forms. However the built in forms don't allow customization and don't provide a thank you page.

Free form hosting

It is possible to have free form hosting but normally the forms will contain adverts. Free form hosting is only recommended for trial purposes and for hobby websites.

User Data

The data entered into the form is extracted from the form by the form handler and is either emailed to you or placed into a database on the web server.

Creating Your Own Forms

Even though today it is usually unnecessary to create your own forms using HTML, as most good web page editors do the work for you, or you use third party forms. It is still useful to be familiar with the form structure and form elements in case you need to tweak a form or manually edit one.

Therefore we will look at Creating Website Forms.

Related articles and Resources:

• Creating Website Forms
• Processing Website Forms
• PHP and Perl Contact feedback form www.thesitewizard.com
• Free Remote form hosting www.formbuddy.com
• Free form creation tool and wide selection of ready made secure forms (timesheet, Pizza order, loan application). www.formhosts.com.