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Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578477 by Eidolon
Jan 13, 2011 4:31am
Thread Board (disabled)
Also, as a side thought, I know we have one of these on a website at work. However, I didn't build it so can't tell you a lot about it. Let me see if I can cannibalize it a bit to make a new simple one since Atlanta is still "closed" four days after the ice/snow and I haven't been to work all week and am tired of cleaning. LOL
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578310 by Romana
Jan 13, 2011 7:35am
Thread Board (disabled)
In tinkering with mine I have discovered the folks who created it did some weird PERL scripting, which I know nothing about. However, I have a couple comments/thought now at least...

Apparently, it can matter if you are using a Unix versus a Windows based server depending on how the cgi is written. For instance, ours apparently is using EZFormMail which won't work on Windows servers since it uses SENDMAIL, which is a Unix command.

Also, I saw where some servers care about the path so try http://www.am-jenner.com/cgi-bin/email.cgi instead of the relative path.

One other thought is did you create the cgi-bin folder or was it already there? Point being, there is only one that matters, the system one. That is where your files need to be. Just creating your own folder doesn't work without additional programming knowledge. See my comment about weird PERL scripting on ours; that is what they did. They built a sub cgi-bin folder that still is able to function but when I tried making a new test form and cgi in the same locations and it doesn't work, at least not yet (still playing).
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578509 by Eidolon
Jan 13, 2011 8:24am
Thread Board (disabled)
I'll try the absolute path.
the cgi-bin was already there, so at least I know I did that part right, lol.

nope, changing the path didn't make any difference. I still got the same error message. sigh.

romana
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578524 by Romana
Jan 13, 2011 10:07am
Thread Board (disabled)
Another thing I see is make sure the .cgi is uploaded as ASCII, not Binary. However, I don't think that is the problem. Not that I have any other bright ideas at the moment either. Or not so bright ones for that matter...
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578564 by Eidolon
Jan 13, 2011 10:17am
Thread Board (disabled)
This page has a way to verify that PERL is actually working correctly plus some other troubleshooting options.

http://encodable.com/internal_server_error/
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578310 by Romana
Jan 13, 2011 8:41pm
Thread Board (disabled)
Because you're getting a server error - that usually means that there is a problem with the script itself. For form to email scripts, this is usually because the script is pointing to sendmail and sendmail isn't located there. However, it's nearly impossible to say what is choking it without seeing the error logs.

Do you have access to the error logs on your website? If you do, you should try to access the script again and watch the logs to see what the error is that is killing the script. However, most people don't have access to the server error log - so you should contact your administrator like it says.

The 404 for the ErrorDocument is something that usually is handled by the administrator. All that really means is that your script generated a 500 error (server error) and then couldn't find a customized page for that error, so it displayed the generic 500 error page.

By contacting the admin with the time you tried to get the CGI to work, he/she can then look at the error log and tell you "oh, it's pointing to /usr/bin/sendmail and sendmail is at /bin/sendmail on our machine" or whatever the error is that is causing the problem.

If you'd like me to look at the CGI file that was generated, I can tell you if there are any typos or other problems that might be causing it - email me at webdesign.guide@about.com or paste it here.
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578345 by Green Tortuga
Jan 13, 2011 8:45pm
Thread Board (disabled)
Unfortunately, mailto forms are very unreliable. They have problems in more than just Outlook. The way these forms work, they tell the browser to contact the default email client on the customer's machine and then send the email. So, you have several additional points of failure - there has to be a default email client, it has to be able to connect with the browser they are using, and that client has to be able to accept form data and send it on correctly.

I don't recommend people use mailto forms, as they often cause more problems than they solve. But they are much easier than most CGI and PHP forms. :-)
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578509 by Eidolon
Jan 13, 2011 8:49pm
Thread Board (disabled)
One other thought is did you create the cgi-bin folder or was it already there? Point being, there is only one that matters, the system one. That is where your files need to be. Just creating your own folder doesn't work without additional programming knowledge

Oh, that's a great point! As you said, you can't simply make a cgi-bin folder and have it work. The web server has to know that that folder is for CGI scripts and give them access so that they interact correctly.

I was first thinking it was the path, as you mentioned - as most cgi-bin folders don't live off the docroot and pointing to them with a relative path would be more likely to generate a 404 not found error. But I imagine they might generate a 500 error too. I think I'm going to test this tomorrow. :-)
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578717 by Maos
Jan 14, 2011 11:23am
Thread Board (disabled)
Do you have access to the error logs on your website? If you do, you should try to access the script again and watch the logs to see what the error is that is killing the script.

I'm not sure...I'll look. I think I do, actually, but don't konw enough about the mysteries of how it works to read them.

However, most people don't have access to the server error log - so you should contact your administrator like it says.

it's telling me to contact the webmaster...and gives the email address
webmaster@am-jenner.com

. I think it's taking that email address from the bottom of the page...because I have a note at the bottom of each page saying that's where pepole should email if there's a problem with the site. However, that email address...is mine, and gets forwarded to my live.com account. I can't see me asking me for my help, somehow.

I'll send you all three files the thing generated, if it would help, and I'll look for the error logs.

I'm thankful for everyone who's looking into this for me...letterboxers are the best people!

romana
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578310 by Romana
Jan 14, 2011 3:47pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I use PHP for mine. It works with Outlook. Obviously your host would have to have PHP on their server. If you want to try it out, you can "join the mailing list" from www.serenityvalleywinery.com. It just emails the entered address to the winery owner and she adds it to her list manually.

I have a form on the HTML page like this:

<form action="AddToEmailList.php" method="get">
<input type="text" name="SubmittorEmail" size="100" />
<input name="submit" type="submit" style="margin-left:20px;" value=" Submit Email " />
</form>

The PHP page that it calls does this (and the page looks like a normal page so that the echoed message looks nice):

<?php
$SubmittorEmail = $_GET['SubmittorEmail'];
$email = "contact@serenitywinerymo.com";
$subject = "Please add me to your email list";
$message = "Please add the following to the Serenity email list: ".$SubmittorEmail;
mail($email,$subject,$message);
echo "Your email address '".$SubmittorEmail."' will be added to our distribution list. Thank you!";
?>
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #578717 by Maos
Jan 15, 2011 11:25am
Thread Board (disabled)
Maos - Thanks so much for looking at the script. I followed your advice, and the problem is fixed, and not just on the email script, but all over my site. The whole site works now, and it's all thanks to you!

Get with me about the socks / hand warmers...I sent particulars to your email.

Romana
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #579088 by Romana
Jan 15, 2011 11:35am
Thread Board (disabled)
I followed your advice, and the problem is fixed, and not just on the email script, but all over my site.

Okay, you can't tease us like that. What was wrong?!!! =)

-- Ryan
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #579089 by Green Tortuga
Jan 15, 2011 12:05pm
Thread Board (disabled)
in the main cgi file, the stupid program didn't start the first line with #!

and in the third file with the .pbp extension, some of the references pointed to where the file was on my hard drive instead of where it was on my website.

I fixed both of those items, and all worked well!

And Maos gets a pair of handwarmers!

Ryan, I'm so grateful that you have built this wonderful community for us here; there are so many more resources here than just about letterboxing. I've used this site to get help on homework, and now with my website...good people hang out here, who are willing to help others, and if you hadn't made this place, my life would be considerably poorer.

Romana
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #579095 by Romana
Jan 15, 2011 1:00pm
Thread Board (disabled)
good people hang out here, who are willing to help others, and if you hadn't made this place, my life would be considerably poorer.

If it weren't for you, my feet right now would be considerably colder than they currently are. =)

-- Ryan, with toasty warm, hand-knitted socks on
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #579095 by Romana
Jan 15, 2011 9:02pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I was quite surprised about the missing #! that is required for any CGI script.

I'm glad it's all working now. And you gave me some great article ideas too. So it was a win-win!
Re: form help
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #579202 by Maos
Jan 16, 2011 2:35am
Thread Board (disabled)
hooray! I love win-win! it's just good for everyone that way!

romana
Replacement for FrontPage
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Mar 6, 2011 2:05pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I have several websites that I created using FrontPage (I know, I know, don't say it!) and now I would like to find a replacement for it but one that has similar elements and would work with the sites I already have in place.

I considered Microsoft Expressions but I don't know if that is the best choice since it's still Microsoft.

Any suggestions will be most appreciated.

Mini Mouse
Re: Replacement for FrontPage
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #590449 by Mini Mouse
Mar 7, 2011 6:36pm
Thread Board (disabled)
Dreamweaver is popular. I haven't used it in a long time. Converting from FP should be mostly painless.

sula
Re: Replacement for FrontPage
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #590449 by Mini Mouse
Mar 8, 2011 3:52pm
Thread Board (disabled)
You can do a lot even with an old copy of Dreamweaver. I use version 8, which I think I ordered from eBay for much cheaper than the newest version. I have created plenty of sites with it, such as:
Conservative TV Online
Serenity Valley Winery
Heartland Remodeling (flash created separately)
Irish Dance Academy
Quaint Cotons
IntegriTivity Computer Solutions
Big Country Acres Subdivision
Barton family
It will read another programs HTML files just fine and then you'll probably want to clean them up a little!
Re: Replacement for FrontPage
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #590449 by Mini Mouse
Mar 23, 2011 9:53pm
Thread Board (disabled)
The best editor in my tests is Dreamweaver. If you're looking for free WYSIWYG go with Kompozer. But if you're comfortable with writing HTML then Komodo edit is my favorite free choice.

My page here: http://webdesign.about.com/od/htmleditors/a/aa121304.htm has a questionnaire that can help as well as a bunch of reviews and other resources.

Expression is good, but it's not all that like FrontPage. I would get it if you want to support Microsoft. It ranks around 3 or 4 on my Windows editor list.

Good luck!
Re: Replacement for FrontPage
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #594132 by Maos
Mar 23, 2011 10:25pm
Thread Board (disabled)
But if you're comfortable with writing HTML then Komodo edit is my favorite free choice.

If you're comfortable writing html, then notepad works nicely, and it's already on your computer if you're running windows.

romana
Re: Replacement for FrontPage
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #594133 by Romana
May 2, 2011 11:27am
Thread Board (disabled)
:-) yeah, but notepad doesn't complete the tags as I type them. and it's not on my Mac... ;-)
.htaccess file - need to use RewriteRule AND Redirect 301
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Oct 14, 2011 1:52pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I am trying to accomplish multiple things with my .htaccess file but can't get them all to work at the same time.

#Section1 is to redirect all non-www to www
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.integritivity\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.integritivity.com/$1 [L,R=301]
#Section2 is to redirect two specific pages that have a new name
redirect 301 /WebDesign.htm http://www.integritivity.com/WebDesign.html
redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.integritivity.com/index.html

I have tried rearranging the order (Section 2 first, etc) and various syntax and each section works separately. Is there some way to get them to work together? Currently, Section2 is just ignored.

(PS the whole site is being revamped, so I know that some pages don't match, but I'm stuck here.)

Thanks in advance!
Re: .htaccess file - need to use RewriteRule AND Redirect 301
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #647275 by MO UR4Me
Oct 14, 2011 2:02pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I tried adding this at the end instead, to no avail:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} WebDesign\.htm [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://integritivity.com/WebDesign.html [R=301,L]
Re: .htaccess file - need to use RewriteRule AND Redirect 301
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #647275 by MO UR4Me
Oct 14, 2011 4:43pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I can't say that I'm particularly familiar with rewrite rules or how they all work, but I do remember I had trouble getting them to work on AQ. (Notice that no matter what, AQ will always redirect you to www.atlasquest.com?)

My solution, ultimately, was just to check in the source code and redirect from there, such as:

if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] != 'www.atlasquest.com') {
header('Location: http://www.atlasquest.com/'.$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
exit();
}

Then, presumably, the section #2 problem just goes away. =)

If that's not an option, though, and those are the only two files that need to be redirected, you could always plop in an actual page at those locations that do nothing more than redirect to the new location. So, if you don't need a section #2, then the problem also goes away. =)

-- Ryan
Re: .htaccess file - need to use RewriteRule AND Redirect 301
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #647308 by Green Tortuga
Oct 15, 2011 6:44am
Thread Board (disabled)
Well at least I'm in good company in having trouble with it! :-) Yeah, my last resort is to just redirect those two particular pages, but the whole reason I'm even trying a redirect at all is because those two pages have link juice that I want to forward. From what I've read, Google doesn't like redirects from the pages themselves b/c spammers do a lot of that. But it's better than what I have right now - duplicate content! I think the .htaccess problem is some kind of conflict between using those two methods. I'll keep looking.... thanks!
Re: .htaccess file - need to use RewriteRule AND Redirect 301
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Reply to: #647404 by MO UR4Me
Oct 15, 2011 9:55am
Thread Board (disabled)
I think the .htaccess problem is some kind of conflict between using those two methods.

I'm not sure it's necessarily that there's a "conflict" between the two methods per se. I vaguely remember reading something about the server only redirecting once during any one page hit, which might mean that the second method never even gets a chance to run.

But it still leaves you with the same problem as before. It's been years since I've had to mess with that sort of stuff, though, and don't really remember exactly what problem I was having. I just know the redirect to www happens in my code--not on the server. The 301 redirects I do are on the server, though. I have a special file just for those redirects, which I link to.

-- Ryan
Droid apps for HTML editing
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Dec 19, 2011 5:36am
Thread Board (disabled)
Do any of you use a Droid app for HTML editing? If so, which do you like? I am considering:
* Webmaster's HTML Editor (plus AndFtp for FTP)
* Android Web Editor
(whichever one I choose, I'll do the free Lite version first to try it out)
Hacking Joomla Core Registration (or a good plugin)
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Dec 30, 2011 3:41pm
Thread Board (disabled)
Long story with a quick question at the end: I just inherited a Joomla website made by another developer. They had hacked Joomla's core registration, which I found and further modified, but what I really wanted to do was implement a PayPal option for "premium membership".

The PayPal part was easy (I wrote my own .php ); the issue has been giving the user a CHOICE where one of the choices needs to submit to TWO forms (the com_user from Joomla and my PHP). I tried about 8 different ways over 3 days, and each method would get stuck somewhere because Joomla won't give me complete control. For instance, I can't use an onClick of a button if it's within the form. But that's OK, I worked around that, too. I accomplished the CHOICE part by creating a non-form-type button that sends the current form to a Javascript, which then keeps that data in a separate variable and reads some of that data and puts it into a dynamic (invisible) form that gets submitted to my PHP page. I then submit those two forms.

Separately, both forms work exactly as I want them to. However, I cannot submit them BOTH without the first one being ignored. No matter which order I put them in, the last one gets submitted correctly. Just in case it's because there can only be one "form", they have both been put into otherwise-named variables, so there is no mix up. I have also tried using _blank and _self, trying all iterations of which one is which and which order the forms would be submitted. No luck! I even just tried sending all the variables to my PHP and then putting the registration ones in the PayPal return URL to try to make it run the Joomla registration on the way back, but I don't know the token ID.

Question: Has anyone seen/used a good registration plugin that has the OPTION for using Paypal? I found one description of how to combine a registration plugin and the Paypal plugin, but that sounds like a lot more hours of configuration (although it might be worth it) and it looked like I'd have to send everyone to PayPal. Or any ideas of things I might not have tried?

I finally settled (and I mean settled, as I have never failed to figure something out before) on placing the Premium button right after they enter their name on the registration page (that's all I really need), which send them to Paypal and then brings them back to the same form, which is now blank. Very unprofessional, although it's an improvement over the past (print the form and mail it) and the client will probably be quite happy with it. But I'm not!

The page I am talking about is this here.

Sigh... I really don't like templates, even Joomla. I want CONTROL!

Thanks and Happy New Year.
Help, I'm Having a Senior Moment
Board: Designing and Creating Webpages
Jan 10, 2012 12:53pm
Thread Board (disabled)
I'm making a three-page website for a friend. She wants to be able to go in and change the content herself. I know there's a tag so I can say "change this part" and it won't show up on the web page, but she will be able to see it when she looks at the code. So she will know which parts she can muck with and which parts to leave alone. I just can't remember how that tag reads. seems to me it has a bunch of # and all caps in it...

And of course, I'm in a hurry to finish her project so I can get on with getting ready for school next week, publishing MY book, and hosting a mini-meet this weekend. You know, the important stuff....

Romana