[Pro] Mailing List Form submission problem

I recently upgraded to 5.5 Pro because I wanted to redesign my website. I’m using the Simple Site Search for my new website. I recreated my Mailing List page, put in all the same info to submit the form, but the form won’t submit. I noticed that after hitting the submit button that the website redirects to my results page that I use for the search. It’s supposed to redirect to a thank you page instead. I’m wondering if the Simple Site Search is the reason my mailing list form won’t submit.

I’ve got the formmail.pl file in my cgi-bin folder to make my form work in the past. Can anyone help me with a form submission. I’m not a website designer so I don’t know all the techie stuff. But if anyone could explain how to get a form to submit this way or a totally different way. I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Angela
The form is on this page.
http://www.angelasglassstudio.com/mailinglist.html


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If you have more than one form on the page, you’re going to have to be
careful to make them separate from one another. Freeway’s normal
behavior is to wrap the entire page in a form, and thus any other
forms you add to that page will be nested within the parent form. You
can’t nest forms in HTML. (You can, but as you’ve seen, they stop
working when you do, and your page is also invalid.)

I haven’t used SSS yet, so I can’t say for sure how you need to
proceed on that front, but there is an Action called Multiple Forms
Suite that you can use in your page to isolate one form from another.
There’s one Action you apply to the page called No Form, which keeps
the Freeway page from wrapping the entire page contents with one form.
Then there is an item action you apply to one or more HTML boxes on
your page, each of which will then contain a single form. All of your
form setup dialog will shift into this Action’s interface. As long as
you don’t nest the two form elements’ HTML boxes in any way, this will
result in two separate and properly coded forms.

Walter

On Feb 20, 2011, at 10:00 PM, Angela Weber wrote:

I recently upgraded to 5.5 Pro because I wanted to redesign my
website. I’m using the Simple Site Search for my new website. I
recreated my Mailing List page, put in all the same info to submit
the form, but the form won’t submit. I noticed that after hitting
the submit button that the website redirects to my results page that
I use for the search. It’s supposed to redirect to a thank you page
instead. I’m wondering if the Simple Site Search is the reason my
mailing list form won’t submit.

I’ve got the formmail.pl file in my cgi-bin folder to make my form
work in the past. Can anyone help me with a form submission. I’m not
a website designer so I don’t know all the techie stuff. But if
anyone could explain how to get a form to submit this way or a
totally different way. I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Angela
The form is on this page.
http://www.angelasglassstudio.com/mailinglist.html


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Okay. I disabled the Simple Site Search and discovered that my form does work. So that’s at least something.

I looked for Multiple Forms Suite and I didn’t see it. So is this something I must download and install?

I didn’t see No Form either. I’m assuming that needs to be downloaded and installed.

I’ll look for those two things, but I only know a little about designing this website. I hope I can accomplish this because I upgraded to the new version of Freeway specifically to use the Simple Site Search.


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Yes, you can usually find all the Actions at ActionsForge, although
there are a few holdouts that aren’t there.

http://www.actionsforge.com/projects/view/24-multiple-form-suite

Walter

On Feb 20, 2011, at 10:45 PM, Angela Weber wrote:

I looked for Multiple Forms Suite and I didn’t see it. So is this
something I must download and install?


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Thank you for the link!

I have another question. Normally, when I download actions I can just double click it and then it asks if I would like to install it. The Pro version of the Multiple Form action doesn’t have the correct icon and opens up a window with a bunch of code. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to look like that or if something is wrong with the file. I’m not sure what to do with the code. I thought this was supposed to be an action.

I just want to say that I really appreciate your help. Website design is a little beyond my abilities. I’ve got a degree in Graphic Design, but I got that just as the internet was starting up. So my degree doesn’t include website design so I’ve been struggling through designing this website.

Thanks again!
Angela


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On Feb 20, 2011, at 11:21 PM, Angela Weber wrote:

Thank you for the link!

I have another question. Normally, when I download actions I can
just double click it and then it asks if I would like to install it.
The Pro version of the Multiple Form action doesn’t have the correct
icon and opens up a window with a bunch of code. I’m not sure if
it’s supposed to look like that or if something is wrong with the
file. I’m not sure what to do with the code. I thought this was
supposed to be an action.

Try dragging the file (in the Finder) over the top of the Freeway icon
in your Dock. That will force the association. If that doesn’t work,
then there’s one more thing to try – rename the file so it has
the .fwaction file extension. Older Actions used to be named with
the .act3 extension, and earlier versions of Freeway would accept
either one. Starting with FW5, only .fwaction (and .fwactionb for
bundle Actions) was accepted.

Walter

I just want to say that I really appreciate your help. Website
design is a little beyond my abilities. I’ve got a degree in Graphic
Design, but I got that just as the internet was starting up. So my
degree doesn’t include website design so I’ve been struggling
through designing this website.

Thanks again!
Angela


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I should have known that. I dragged it onto my freeway icon and it said I was installing an action. I found the No Form action and applied it to the page, but I can’t find the Multiple Form Suite action. Where do I find that action when it’s installed? I looked under Page, Item and Insert and can’t find it. Hopefully, it was installed correctly.


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I found and downloaded a Multiple Form Suite.act3. Now I do see the action in my Freeway program. I did Insert, Action. And an item popped onto my page. Now what do I do with it?
The action palette shows a text field with “Action” in front of it. And then Method/Post.


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From what I’ve read in the forums I should be able to select one of my form items and apply the Multiple Form action to it. They only way I was able to get it to show up at all was to install the really old action and even then it only showed up under the Insert Menu/Action. I can’t get it to show up in the Item Menu/Action. I tried downloading the action again. Quitting the program and restarting. Reinstalling the action. I think there’s something wrong with the action since it didn’t even have the correct icon when I downloaded it. Does anyone have a good file to send me?


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Take another look at ActionsForge. There are two different versions of
this Action. One is only usable within Freeway 3 and lower, the other
is for 4 and greater. I suspect, particularly based on the suffix of
the file, that you have the former. If you click on the page somewhere
empty, look in the Actions palette for the version number of the No
Form Action. You’ll see this number in the lower-right corner of the
palette when that tab is selected.

Here’s how to get the next version. First, in your document, remove
all vestiges of the Action from your page. Delete the Action-item that
you drew on your page, and then, while nothing on the page is
selected, click the (x) in the tab for No Form in the Actions palette.

In the Finder, click on your username in the sidebar of any window,
and then click on the Library sub-folder. Navigate to Application
Support / Freeway 5 / Actions / General and remove the existing
Multiple Forms Suite file. (Put it in the trash.)

Download Multiple Forms 2.0, and you should find that you can install
it with a double-click.

Once you have it installed, re-apply No Form to the page, then select
an HTML box that encloses your form elements. A table is the best
choice for this, although you can also nest your freehand-drawn
elements within another element; either by grouping them, or by
drawing another box, sending it behind the form, and then using the
Site pane in Page mode to drag the form elements and associated text
elements into that larger box as nested children.

(Opinionated Sidebar)It’s always a good idea to lay out your forms
using a table. I like to use two columns, and as many rows as you have
fields, plus one for the submit button. This way your form has a
semantic structure to it, where the label and the field it belongs to
share a row. Short of using the real tag for this (the label tag),
which Freeway doesn’t provide, there’s no better way to ensure that a
visually disabled person is going to be able to make sense of your
form when they use assistive technology like a screen reader. (/
Opinionated Sidebar)

Once you have all of your form elements contained within a single HTML
element, you can apply the Multiple Form Action to that parent
element. In the Actions palette, you will see a crude simulation of
Freeway’s normal Page / Form Setup dialog. Within the Action palette,
you need to duplicate anything that you set up for the form, since
Form Setup is ignored when the No Form Action is applied to the page.
So if you have to set a bunch of hidden fields for formmail.pl, then
do so using the Hidden FIelds controls in the Actions palette. If you
have to set the Action of your form to /cgi-bin/formmail.pl or
whatever, then do so in the Action field in the Actions palette.

Now as far as the SSS Action goes, you might want to try just applying
the Action to the box where you added your SSS instance, and leaving
all the Multiple Form controls alone. I think that SSS simply looks
outward from itself in the page, and grabs and rewrites the very first
form tag it encounters. As long as SSS runs after Multiple Form, you
shouldn’t need to set anything.

Walter

On Feb 21, 2011, at 12:55 AM, Angela Weber wrote:

From what I’ve read in the forums I should be able to select one of
my form items and apply the Multiple Form action to it. They only
way I was able to get it to show up at all was to install the really
old action and even then it only showed up under the Insert Menu/
Action. I can’t get it to show up in the Item Menu/Action. I tried
downloading the action again. Quitting the program and restarting.
Reinstalling the action. I think there’s something wrong with the
action since it didn’t even have the correct icon when I downloaded
it. Does anyone have a good file to send me?


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I deleted all the Multiple Form actions in the folder you told me about. I downloaded the 2.0 again. But it can’t be double-clicked to be installed. It still has that generic icon. The Express version has the correct icon, but the Pro version does not. The Pro version just opens Apple Script Editor. I dragged the file on top of the Freeway icon to force the association and it said I was installing a new action. I applied No Form action to the page. I grouped the form elements. But I don’t see how to apply the Multiple Form action to any of it.

I appreciate the info about the table. I’m happy to redo my form using a table. I do want to do things correctly. I haven’t used tables yet so I’ll have to figure that out. But the Multiple Form action should still work if I group all my form elements together. Right?

Sidenote-I only used the .act3 because the current 2.0 Pro version didn’t seem to be installing correctly. Thought maybe I could get away with using an old version, but I guess not.


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Okay. I read that I could apply the action to any of the form elements, but that wasn’t working for me. Thanks for saying Parent element because when I clicked on the big box that groups them all together I was able to finally apply the Multiple Form.

Now I’m not sure what to put into the Action Palette. I don’t understand how this works.

I have Name, Method, Action and Hidden Fields in the Palette. Can you give me an example of what to put in those areas?


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Okay. The Name thing through me off. I just put “Form” in there and then added the action I had in the form setup box. The hidden fields part through me off too because I didn’t have the palette open large enough and the second box “Value” was cut off. So I added in my hidden fields info also. Off to go test.


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I am so sorry for being such a pain in the butt. I never would have figured this stuff out without your help.

The form appears to submit and lands on the page I specified, but I haven’t gotten the info in an email. The form worked last night when I turned off the Simple Site Search. So I know that’s not the issue.

I put Form in the name field, Selected POST, and /bin/script_library/form_handler_mail was put in the action field.
I added two hidden fields.
end_display and then the webpage I wanted it to land on.
order and the order I wanted the data to appear.

This is all the information I had in the Form Setup box.

One more thing… the radial buttons can both be clicked instead of one or the other.

I would appreciate any help you can give me.


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On Feb 21, 2011, at 10:44 AM, Angela Weber wrote:

I am so sorry for being such a pain in the butt. I never would have
figured this stuff out without your help.

The form appears to submit and lands on the page I specified, but I
haven’t gotten the info in an email. The form worked last night when
I turned off the Simple Site Search. So I know that’s not the issue.

I put Form in the name field, Selected POST, and /bin/script_library/
form_handler_mail was put in the action field.
I added two hidden fields.
end_display and then the webpage I wanted it to land on.
order and the order I wanted the data to appear.

This is all the information I had in the Form Setup box.

Hmmm. There’s usually a field where you enter the e-mail address where
the form data is supposed to be sent. You didn’t mention that, can you
double-check that there isn’t yet another hidden field in the Page /
Form Setup? Maybe scrolled down below your line of sight within the
list of fields?

One more thing… the radial buttons can both be clicked instead of
one or the other.

That means they haven’t been set up correctly. Both radio buttons
should have the same name, but different values. When you receive the
form input, you should see that the name of the variable matches the
common name you applied to all members of that radio group, and the
value equals the chosen radio button. Here’s what the published code
will look like. These attributes map exactly to their counterparts in
Freeway’s Inspector, unlike some other aspects of form setup.

<input type="radio" name="foo" value="bar" />
<input type="radio" name="foo" value="baz" />
// result is either of:
// $foo == 'bar'
// or
// $foo == 'baz'

These settings can be made in the third tab from the left in the
Inspector while the radio button is selected in the design view. It
doesn’t matter at all what you set in the first tab, that won’t
actually help in any way.

Walter

I would appreciate any help you can give me.


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Fixed the radial button thing. Don’t know how I screwed that up. My old website form worked fine. Must have forgotten to name the buttons the same thing. Now I can select only one.

I don’t have a hidden field where I put in my email address. I thought the script took care of that. I put my email in the script in the appropriate spot and it worked on my old site and last night when I turned off Simple Site Search.

I put in email and then mailto:myaddress

That worked. I received the data. But I’m not getting a value for the Add radial button or Remove radial button from my form.


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Still trying to get info from the add and remove radial buttons, but nothing yet. I was getting info when they were set up wrong. I had Add in the Name field and Value field. And Remove in both fields for the Remove button. I was getting info from them then, but of course they could both me clicked on together which isn’t right.

The Simple Site Search isn’t working on the Mailing List page, but appears to be working on every other page. I guess it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to remove the search box on that particular page, if it comes down to it. But I need to get info from my radial buttons. Can you see what I’m doing wrong?


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Can you post a link to a working form page? And another to your broken
page? I’d like to compare the generated code at each, and see if I can
spot the odd man out. Also, it’s usually not correct to add mailto: in
an e-mail address. That’s perfectly fine if you are adding it in a
normal hyperlink, because it tells the browser to hand the link off to
the e-mail application. But in a form setup dialog, it’s not correct,
and might be contributing to your problem.

There is a little-used feature of HTML forms where you set the Action
attribute to a mailto:address. If you do that, pressing the form’s
submit button opens the mail application on your user’s computer,
addressed to whatever the mailto: address was, and with the body of
the mail message set to a cryptic URL-encoded format of the form
elements’ values. Almost nobody uses this for anything, because it
then relies on the user to press Send and generally confuses more than
helps.

Walter

On Feb 21, 2011, at 11:31 AM, Angela Weber wrote:

Fixed the radial button thing. Don’t know how I screwed that up. My
old website form worked fine. Must have forgotten to name the
buttons the same thing. Now I can select only one.

I don’t have a hidden field where I put in my email address. I
thought the script took care of that. I put my email in the script
in the appropriate spot and it worked on my old site and last night
when I turned off Simple Site Search.

I put in email and then mailto:myaddress

That worked. I received the data. But I’m not getting a value for
the Add radial button or Remove radial button from my form.


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I was just going to send you a message about a work around I came up with.

I changed the radial buttons to check boxes. I know that means that they could potentially check both boxes, but I think most people know how to work check boxes.

I also deleted the search box off that page since it wasn’t working and I figure since it works on all the other pages they can search from those.

I saved the other page (with the radial buttons) and can upload that one again if you’d like to see the code.

Here is the page as it is now with the checkboxes and no search. Let me know if you’d like to see the other one still.

http://www.angelasglassstudio.com/mailinglist.html

I really do appreciate all your help. I have learned alot!


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Definitely remove the mailto: part of that e-mail address in the
hidden email field. And you may need to go into the Document Setup and
turn off “Encode E-mail Addresses”. That field’s value is full of
encoded characters, and your form handler may or may not deal well
with those.

I can’t imagine why the radio (not radial) buttons wouldn’t work. You
should name them both something like list_preference or similar, and
keep their values the same as you have them. The result in your form
submission should be list_preference = Add or list_preference = Remove.

You might want to try out Tim Plumb’s PHP Feedback Form Action in
place of this system. For one thing, that Action will never reveal the
e-mail address that the form is being sent to. Your system is just
about as secure as putting your e-mail address right there on the
screen as a clickable link. For some people, that’s a deal-breaker,
because it gets them way more “attractive offers” than they can stand.
For another, that Action will make a complete form system for you,
where there can be separate error pages for “that doesn’t look like an
e-mail address” or other mandatory fields, as well as a thanks page, e-
mail autoreply, and other professional touches. There’s even a
rudimentary spam catcher called a “honeypot”, which will cut down on
those “attractive offers” even more.

Walter

On Feb 21, 2011, at 1:05 PM, Angela Weber wrote:

I was just going to send you a message about a work around I came up
with.

I changed the radial buttons to check boxes. I know that means that
they could potentially check both boxes, but I think most people
know how to work check boxes.

I also deleted the search box off that page since it wasn’t working
and I figure since it works on all the other pages they can search
from those.

I saved the other page (with the radial buttons) and can upload that
one again if you’d like to see the code.

Here is the page as it is now with the checkboxes and no search. Let
me know if you’d like to see the other one still.

http://www.angelasglassstudio.com/mailinglist.html

I really do appreciate all your help. I have learned alot!


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