Web Form - Email Info?

[dpmdesign]

I have seen many posts on having a form "post" to PHP on a server to have the information set to a certain email address. I am still confused a bit. I created a form in HTML that can be viewed here: http://www.heeterins.com/homeowners_quote.html
My problem is first how to get it to "connect" to the PHP file on the server and they the 2nd part that I haven't found any information on is how to direct the form to an email to be viewed? The only thing that I've been seeing in response to these types of questions is this piece of coding <form action="" method="post" name="homequote" id="homequote">. I kind of understand that I need to put in a form action and I'm guessing it will point to the server but how to I redirect it to an email address?
These are what are in the cgi-bin folder on the company's server: PHP4-cgi, PHP5-cgi, PHP-cgi, printenv and test-cgi.
This is Greek to me so any info would help.
Also if I build a site with .aspx would the form still be in PHP or .aspx. I am asking this question for a different website I'm building different website.
Thanks for the help!!!

[bfsog]

You are right, the forms' action tag must point to a processing file.

It is inside this file that you a PHP variable (or constant) that is assigned the e-mail address you want to send to, for example

$to = 'myaddress@mydomain.com'; 

Inside that same file you will have some other code that sets the subject, body, headers of an e-mail and code that actually sends the e-mail.

I am not sure what you mean by

how to direct the form to an email to be viewed?

Do you want to use PHP to check your e-mail?

And regarding the ASP.NET issue, it depends if you mean a server side controls (form controls) or if you just mean having bog standard HTML form elements in a ASP.NET page. If it is the latter then the form is still HTML but it just happens to appear in a .php or a .aspx page

I must dash but if you have other questions feel free to ask more.

[dpmdesign]

Thanks for the reply. What I mean by, "how to direct the form to an email to be viewed?" was kind of confusing. I was just wanting to "view" it in an email so you basically answered my question. So in the php file is where I will need to edit the recipient, the subject, etc? I downloaded these file from the server but was unable to open them. What program do I need to view the php file? I think I might know but not 100%.
Thanks again for your great help!

[bfsog]

Yes, the action of the form is where you would set the recipient, subject, the actual content of the e-mail, everything.

Any text editor can be used to edit PHP files. For instance you could Notepad (Windows) or a fully fledged PHP editor such as Crimson Editor or HydraPHP (I used to use Hydra years ago, not sure if it is still in development.

To show you what I mean I just opened up Notepad and typed the following

<?php
// Always use <?php and not <?
  echo "Mary had a little lamb.";
?>

I saved that as dpmdesigndemo.php (also remember to change Save As Type to All Files) and put that on my PHP Server and voila, whnen I view it through my browser I see

Mary had a little lamb.

[matty14]

I'm having similar problems. I've created this form:
http://tamesideuserforum.freehostia....tionairre.html
and I've tried several php scripts ia an attempt to get the results sent to me via e-mail but none of them have worked - this is despite displaying the message that says the results have been submitted.
I cant figure out what i'm doing wrong. I'm not sure if the problem is with my host (freehostia) or with the scripts that I have used.
Any help would be greatly appreciated