Dream Possibilities, Weave Reality

A posse ad esse, from possibilty to actuality with Dreamweaver

Forms, The Whole Story

Making the Forms

Making a form is the easy part, especially with Dreamweaver. The hard part is getting them to work properly.m Aids

DMXzone has a Free CSS Form Designer Extension... To get the extension all you need to do is sign up, download and install dmxCssFormDesigner

On line Form Generator in html/XHTML and CSS

Accessify.com's web site has an html/XHTML web form builder that includes some CSS for styling.

Free On-line Forms

There are many free form sites available this is just one... http://www.emailmeform.com/v-samples.html

This link takes you to their sample page. For simple forms you can use their "free" service, But these services can get real expensive with weekly and monthly fees if you want more features...
Note the use of Captcha to block spam email

The Freedback Form

Freedback has their own way of "doing" security

Click here to put a form like this on your site.

Form Making Tips

You will need to make several supporting Web Pages

The Form Page. It gathers an e-mail address and name and sends it to you. The user is redirected to a confirm page and/or a thank you page.
The Thank You page. It contains confirmation and a thank you for joining and a link where the user can unsubscribe. And a link to another location in your web site... There is a tendency here to make the transfer automatic in a too short a period of time... Let the user read the page and make their own choices...

Error Page: This is a page that displays if the e-mail attempt was not successful and contains a link to the form page so another attempt can be made. (The Huggins' script takes care of this for you)
Confirm/unsubscribe. This page is displayed when the visitor requests to unsubscribe. It should display a form button to confirm the user's wish to unsubscribe.
Unsubscribed Page. This is the final page, it acknowledges that the user has unsubscribed and that they can re-join at any time.
Here's a sample thankyou page that is a thank you page and a Confirm/unsubscribe page all roled into one.

A thankyou Confirm/Unsubscribe page

Only gather a minimal amount of information. If you are making a Contact form, mailing list form, join a group form or a newsletter form, All you need is their name and e-mail address.
A password input does NOT make the form secure!
Password
If you are gathering sensitive information you need to make your web site secure with an SSL certificate. Ask your host if they provide one for your use (they will probably charge a fee)... You can buy a certificate from GoDaddy for $12.99 per year. Your website will then be available at https://www.yourdomain.com/ and you'll see the padlock icon on your web page browser.
Radio Buttons and Check Boxes

Always put the buttons or selection boxes on the left.

Freedback Form
First Name:
Last Name:
Email Address:
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