Hi. Is there no ready-made contact form that I can put in my website? All I can find are articles/posts explaining how to hand-code your own, or sites that sell a contact form service.
I actually have a free pre-made secure (includes Captcha) contact form package I downloaded years ago (which still works fine), but I was checking to see if a more current (better?) one is available. So far, I can’t find anything.
Both Bootstrap and Foundation have form elements for quickly putting together the client-facing form, however there isn’t any ready-made back end code. You will have to put together the server-side code together by hand, or purchase a solution.
A lot of the tutorials out there are pretty good - like this one: https://bootstrapious.com/p/bootstrap-recaptcha
Somebody else on the forum may have another suggestion, but if you do decide to take the tutorial route, feel free to reach out with any questions.
Bob
Hi, RobM. Thanks for the reply.
Yep, that’s what it seemed like… Easy enough to build the form itself, but the back-end guts are where it gets scary.
All I need is a contact form… They give their email address and message, it does a simple Captcha thing, and the message is emailed to me (…as opposed to just putting my email address on the site, only to have bots savagely harvest it!)
I actually have this working version I downloaded years ago (FastSecureContactForm), but they appear to have gone ‘out of business’. It works, but I was hoping for something new, and ideally something I would know my way around, so I could tweek some things. It was just a bunch of folders and files, and you just drop it on your webspace, and just edit this one(?) file (adding your actual email, greeting message, etc into the code areas marked wtih comments). That’s all you had to do. No service or anything.
Coding the back-end is beyond me. I was checking out the tutorials, but got pretty intimidated half-way through.
I’ve been teaching myself Javascript as it is, so lately I’ve been looking at the code of the one I do have, and seeing if I can figure out how to do the modifications I need.
As good as the current one works, I was just hoping for some newer/better version.
@RobM: Hey, that tutorial you pointed out seems a bit less intimidating. The others I found had a lot of additions, notes, and was far more targetted to those who kinda knew what they were doing! This one seems straightforward, as far as steps. Thanks!
you might try poking around at your internet host… since they likely offer to host your email accts related too the domain name they are hosting for you.
they may have a simple html form that hooks right into your acct email with all the server stuff filled in and you could use that as a starting point… it’s worth a look.
at any rate they probably offer php and mysql on their server which you can use… i’ve been plowing thru that my self for the last several weeks.
getting a server side db set up to hold data that i pass to it using POST, and then later using GET to view, is not terribly difficult but it’s definitely a learning curve above just html and css.
That’s actually a very good point! I know they definitely have the MySQL stuff, plus quite a lot of other helpful apps/services. That totally slipped my mind. I’ll look into that. Thanks.
So, I checked with my host, and unfortunately the person I was speaking to was not too knowledgable on the subject (of contact forms, and any service/pre-made module that they, the host, might provide).
What specifically would I be asking about, as far as (say) back-end modules/services in order for me to create a simple contat form (gets email address and comment, does a simple Captcha, emails the message to me)?
what i was thinking was if they offer a website building tool, you could go in there and build something with all features you are looking for tied into your host acct and use that as a template, maybe?
really just spitballing, here… i have yet to get deep enough into php to start looking at email support and such.
so far, i’ve just stuffed a few strings and numbers into database holes and managed to get them back out again. … thrilling.
Yep, I get what you’re pitching. I suspect that their only site building software is Wordpress-based.
I have to phone them again, and hopefully get an agent that is a bit better versed in this sort of thing. The last guy seemed pretty out of his element on this.
The site itself is done, and like I said, I’m currently using that previous contact form package I downloaded. Today, I dove into the PHP files, and did some modifications. After a bit of fumbling, I managed to make the changes I needed for now.
I’m very new to PHP, and have no coding experience with it. Is it just Javascript, and PHP is just the extension? I was surprised to see that when I opened the PHP in my web editor, it’s actually just an HTML file (as far as code is concerned), with a PHP section inside it.
It all works, though.
Looks like I’ll be doing some reading on PHP. Seems like a worthwhile journey!
Try dcode and codingnepal in YouTube. Especially codingnepal. These people have a whole list of ready made components.
The solution I use is fairly straightforward as initially I had the same issues as I am no php or javascript coder. I use the bootstrap form but then pay a small amount for a backend processor. There is a company, been going years, called FormMail they have plans from $12 a year, the one I use is $24 a year and gives me three processors. Easy to implement in Pinegrow. You can also incorporate a captcha, fairly essential on any form unless you want loads of unwanted attention.
I have used this service many, many times…(While I have only used it once in PG) my go-to web-based form generator is:
https://www.jqueryform.com
It is bootstrap based, free to use, and lets you download both the form and php code all in one. It has straight-forward instructions, and embeds quite easily. (i use an iframe tag). You will want to go in and customize some CSS to make it match your site.
Generally I toss the developer $5 after I make a form, but it is not required.
Quite interested to see other suggestions. I would love to see a PG form plug-in that handles the back end code as well.
You can see it a form sample here on my (still in progress) site:
https://latenightgraphics.com
I use Dreamweaver CS6 plugin then move back to Pinegrow. If you have a version of Dreamweaver try the contact form plugin at extendstudio.com. I am not about paying monthly fees to rent software, so any CS product and a one time fee for the contact form plugin. Then of course do the rest in Pinegrow… The greatest show on Earth!
jotform.com/ is kind of the standard. They even have a free plan.
I also use greenforms.pro one time fee local script. Good support easy and straight forward.
Wow, I got a lot of responses. Thanks everyone!
The old one that I have been using still works, and I managed to edit one section of code that was troublesome. I’ll stick with that for now, as it’s free, it works, and I don’t want to poke around at a possible house of cards. But, I will certainly look into the various suggestions, for when I feel brave enough to tackle it again in the future.
PHP is the server side language that interoperates with html to provide the kind of dynamic experience that js provides on the client side. you also gain access to the linux shell to run scripts on that end.
you can do many of the same things, but how it goes about doing them are completely different.
i haven’t tried but you can probably call and manipulate js code on on the fly as well since the PHP can reach right in and change the code before your browser even sees it.
it’s like messing with the primordial forces of nature…
Ya, the ‘package’ I downloaded was a bunch of files and folders… several PHP files, a css style sheet file, and then all kinds of crypitc voodo stuff in the various folders… javascripts, more php, etc.
Although the inner workings of them is beyond me (some where dedicated to the actual transmission of the message, some in the presentation/verification of the visual Captcha test and checkbox, etc)… I was able to locate the one responsible for the display of the actual form itself, and sort out what was needed to be done.
Hi @ladlon, do you still have a link to that original download, or is the package available anywhere else to play with?
Cheers
Hi, schpengle… It seems the company went under, as I was trying to see if there was an updated version of it when I first started that website when I did the original post.
It was called ‘Fast Secure Contact Form’. Worked well, and didn’t require any signup or third-party. It even had Captcha.
A shame it’s not around… even as the old download site.
You can Google the name, but you’ll probably just find what I did… nothing, other than that they are no longer around, it seems.