The last few weeks I’ve been on a new project and it required several forms to be integrated to a template I got from Dreamtemplate. To be honest, it’s been a nightmare. In case you’ve never done it, this involves making the form fields up and submit button which is the easy part. The problem came when trying to match it to a script or form handler, which is the thing that tells your web site to email the results to you.
I tried every form making program out there and finally got one that really works well. No more editing php scripts, formmail settings, I’m free at last. Machform installs on your web site and has a control panel you log into. You drag and drop whatever form components (like address, drop down boxes, file upload widgets, and so on) and when your done you just put the HTML snippet into a page wherever you want the form on.
There’s CSS options so you can customize the look of it, and it’ll either save the results to your server so you can login and get them, or it’ll email the results to one or more email addresses (just separate them with a comma for more than one). It also works with SSL but you have to change the snippet of code it gives to https or Internet Explorer gives that “mix of secure and insecure items” warning. The cost is $40 and it’s the best money I’ve spent in a long time.
There are alternatives, but I didn’t care for any of them. Some places will make the forms with an easy tool but then there’s a hosting fee each month for your secure forms. I didn’t want anyone leaving the site and really didn’t want to pay for any kind of hosting when the site already had a virtual server and SSL certificate. There’s also places you can get a free form made up fairly easy, but they didn’t have a matching handler to email the results. It always involved a version of formmail or php script and matching up the code to the form fields, and which ones were required, it just got to be drudgery.
Well, I love this program and you’ll notice there’s no affiliate links in this article. The trick here is installing it though. They do offer a free installation within 2 days, but if you do it yourself make sure you know about FTP and file permissions. The instructions are fairly straightforward, and it just took a few minutes with Filezilla to get it uploaded and installed. The 1 site version costs $39 and it’s a one time fee. There’s other versions for multiple sites but the basic package did the job. Make sure you have PHP 4.3 or higher, and MySQL 4.1 or higher before getting it, those are required for it to run.
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