FP98: How to Submit Form Results to E-mail

• Microsoft FrontPage 98 for Windows

SUMMARY

Microsoft FrontPage 98 supports sending form results in e-mail. To accomplish this, you must configure your form to send results to e-mail and the FrontPage Server Extensions to deliver the e-mail to an e-mail transport. This article describes how to set up FrontPage 98 forms for e-mail.

MORE INFORMATION

Defining Your Form

1. In FrontPage Editor, right-click the form (inside the dash border) and then click Form Properties on the menu that appears.

2. In the E-mail Address box, type your e-mail address.

3. Click OK.

4. Save the form by clicking Save on the File menu.

Setting up Your E-mail Transport

To send form results to an e-mail host, the FrontPage Server Extensions require a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server. The FrontPage 98 Server Extensions do not support any other form of e-mail server software.

To send e-mail from the Web server, configure the FrontPage Server Extensions in the Frontpg.ini file on the server to deliver the mail to an e-mail transport. To do this, follow these steps:

1. On the Windows Start menu, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Notepad.

2. On the File menu, click Open.

3. Select the Frontpg.ini file and then click Open.

   This file is typically located in the \Windows or \Winnt folder.

4. Locate the [FrontPage 3.0] section and then enter the parameter you want to configure your e-mail transport, using the following syntax:

   NOTE: For a list of the supported parameters, please see the "Parameters" section of this article.

         Parameter=value
   

   The correct syntax for UNIX is:

         Parameter:value
   

   This should be set in the configuration file Wexxxx.cnf where x stands for the TCP/IP port on which the Web server is running.

         /usr/local/frontpage
   

5. Save and close the file.

Parameters

FrontPage 98 supports five parameters (configurations) for e-mail transport:

• SMTPHost

  This parameter should be set to the name or IP address of a host running an SMTP server or daemon, such as SendMail on UNIX. When a user submits a form whose results are to be sent via e-mail, the FrontPage Server Extensions connect to the SMTP server to deliver the mail. By default, FrontPage assumes the server is listening to port 25 (the standard for SMTP) but you can override this by appending the port number to the name. The name and port number are separated by a colon, like this:

        name:xx
  

  where xx represents the port number.

  The following are examples of a parameter=value setting:

        SMTPHost=mail.example.microsoft.com
        SMTPHost=127.0.0.1
  

  The following is an example of a parameter:value setting:

        SMTPHost:test:1000
  

      - SendMailCommand
  

  This parameter should be set to the name of a program on the server computer to which e-mail should be piped. Typically, this will be SendMail on UNIX, but it could be any program. When the FrontPage Server Extensions receive a form processed as an e-mail message, the Server Extensions invoke the command, replacing all occurrences of "%r" with the recipient of the mail. The per cent sign character followed by any other character is replaced by the recipient's e-mail address. The mail message is passed to the command as standard input. If both SendMailCommand and SMTPHost are set, SendMailCommand takes priority.

  Following is an example of the SendMailCommand parameter:

        SendmailCommand:/usr/lib/sendmail %r
  

• MailSender

  This parameter should be set to the sender's user name. Specifically, it is used as the argument for the "SEND FROM:" command in SMTP. The default for SMTP is "user@host" (without the quotation marks), where "user" is the current user account and "host" is the current host name.

• MailCharSet

  This parameter can be used to override the character set attribute of the content-type header.

• MailEncoding

  This parameter can be used to override the content transfer encoding attribute of the content-type header.

Possible Error Messages

If the SMTP host is present when the form is created, but the SMTP host is later removed (and the form has not changed since then), you will receive the following error on a default page returned by the form when the form is submitted:

   FrontPage Error.

   User: Please report details to this site's webmaster.
   Webmaster: Please see the server's application event log for more
   details.

   The FrontPage Server Extensions have not been configured to send e-mail.
   Please direct your system administrator or Internet Service Provider to
   follow the instructions at "Setting Up Your E-Mail Transport" in the
   \SERK\enu\Admin.htm file on the FrontPage CD-ROM.

   Would you like to remove the e-mail recipient?  (Yes or No)

If you choose not to remove the e-mail recipient and the extensions are not configured correctly, then when the form is filled out and submitted, the form will be refreshed, but without a background image (if there was one) and the Address line in your browser will change from this:

   http://WebServerURL/YourSubWeb/formtoemail2.htm

   http://WebServerURL/YourSubWeb /_vti_bin/shtml.exe/formtoemail2.htm.

If the form is configured to save results to a file, or to send e-mail simultaneously, and the FrontPage Server Extensions are not configured to handle e-mail, a 0-byte file will be created. It will not contain any data, you will not see an error message, and the mail will not be sent.

REFERENCES

For more information about the FrontPage Server Extensions see the FrontPage 98 Server Extensions Resource Kit (SERK) located in the \Serk folder on your FrontPage 98 compact disc.