The FeedBack Form

GeoCities has a CGI Script for EMailing the contents of a form, to your GeoCities registered EMail address (not your GeoCities email). In this section I describe how to change the FrontPage FeedBack Form properties, from being submitted to the FrontPage Extensions, to being submitted to the GeoCities EMail CGI Script. You are not limited to the the FrontPage FeedBack form, you can create your own forms, and set the Form Properties as described here, and the form data will be EMailed to your registered GeoCities Email address.

Note: You can make a form an EMail form, that submits directly to your EMail. But that requires that the user has EMail configured in their browser. The GeoCities EMail CGI Script works, even when the user doesn't have email.

Open the FrontPage Editor.

Select the File menu, New menu sub-item. The New Page, Template/Wizard dialog opens.

Scroll down, and select the FeedBack Form, then press OK.

On one of the Text Entry fields for the form, click your right mouse button. A pop-up menu, will appear, select the Form Properties menu item, and the Form Properties dialog will open.

Push the Send To Other radion button.

Set the selection drop down list to: Custom ISAPI, NSAPI, CGI script..

Then push the Options button and fill in (changing YourGeoUserId to your geocities user id):

Action: /cgi-bin/homestead/mail.pl?YourGeoUserId
Method: POST
Encoding Type:

Note: Encoding Type must be blank, delete anything filled in this field

Press OK to return to the Form Properties dialog

Push the Advanced button, and add the following hidden fields:

In the Hidden Field section, push the Add button.

The Name Value Pair dialog will pop-up. Fill in Name and Value as follows, but use the fully qualified name of your form file instead of mine.

Name: next-url
Value: http://www.oocities.org/SouthBeach/Sands/1492/rpform.htm

This is the name of the html file to be loaded, after the form is sent to your EMail. You can change it to whatever page you wish.

Push OK on the Name Value Pair dialog.

In the Hidden Field section, Add another field as follows:

Name: subject
Value: Home Page Feedback

You can put whatever you want as the value, depending on your EMail, this will be the Subject Line of the EMail that is sent to you with the form.

Press OK to return to the Form Properties dialog 

Back in the Form Properties dialog, set the Form Name to FeedBack.

Press Ok to close the Form Properties dialog

You are Finished, unless you want to customize the form. The 2 push buttons at the bottom of the form are Required, you can only change the text (Submit Comments, Clear Form) for the buttons. The rest of the fields are Optional. You can Add or Remove fields, you can change the wording of any text, just make sure that each field has a Name (in the form field properties dialog).
For an example of a modified form, visit my sister's site at: http://www.oocities.org/SouthBeach/Lights/8592/yellow.htm

Field Names

There are some special field names that you can use with the GeoCities Form CGI-Script:

You can use these Field Names on hidden fields, or on controls in your form. Whether they work or not depends on your receiving EMail program, they do work with HotMail.com, which I use. If you want to see an example, I use them on my Contact Form.

Field Validation

If you click your right mouse button on a field in a form, then on the pop-up menu select the Form Field Validation option. A dialog opens where you can make the field required, or enter other options for checking the contents of the field.

The code (JavaScript) generated for the field validation Works At GeoCities. So you can take advantage of this FrontPage Feature. The only exceptions are the 2 specially named fields 'from-email' and 'from-name' (see above). If you use these field names, do not put any validation on them, you can still validate the other fields on your form (including the email field, if you name it something other than 'from-email').

Thanks to Magic: The Gathering File Depot, for telling me about this feature.

The FeedBack Form

Tell us what you think about our web site, our products, our organization, or anything else that comes to mind. We welcome all of your comments and suggestions.

Author information goes here.
Copyright © 1997 [OrganizationName]. All rights reserved.
Revised: March 28, 1998.

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JES - 03/28/98