falkencreative

If you are using PHP, you would use it to check if the form has been submitted, and then either use $_GET or $_POST to capture the form data. What you do with that data after you get it depends on the application. Some may store it to a database, some may email it to a specified email address... etc.

I'm sorry, but I am not part of your class and I don't know what your professor covered. The answer should be in your notes and course materials. I can provide a direction for you, as I have attempted to do, but the whole point of an exam is to test your knowledge of the covered course materials. Finding others to give you the answers seems to defeat the point of taking the course in the first place.

I'm not exactly sure. Assuming this is part of a class, I'd usually look at my notes for clues to what my professor was expecting -- it should have been covered by the class and would be included in your reading materials. In my opinion, I'm not sure there is a client side solution for this -- at least, not for the capturing/processing aspects of the form. As I said, Javascript could be used to help out with validation, but could be turned off. I'm not sure if AJAX should be included in your answer or not -- I'm not familiar with it enough to know whether it can actually be used to process the form, or if AJAX would just be used to capture the fact that the form was submitted and pass it to a server side processing language.

It's basically the same question as you were asking in your first post in this thread, so I moved it here and deleted the other so it will be easier to follow.

Correct, the form would be written in HTML -- the form processing section would be need to be written in a server side language. I suppose it could be done using AJAX too, but since that again is based on Javascript, it has the potential to be turned off by the user.

The actual form collection/processing would need to be done on the server side, with PHP/ASP.NET, etc. The form validation could be done with either Javascript (client side) or PHP (server side) but Javascript could be turned off by the user, so it is less secure. There are a variety of free services that might help you: http://wufoo.com/ http://www.phpform.org/

I second that -- Notepad++ is quite good.

"The first step you will have to take is to give up Notepad. Notepad has a bug (OK, not strictly a bug, but a very undesireable feature). When saving as Unicode (utf-8), it adds a byte-order mark, which is a zero-width space used to indicate the file contents and whether UTF-16 is "little-endian" or "big-endian" (waaay off-topic for this post!). A BOM is not required in utf-8 and should never be used on the web. Notepad will break your utf-8 pages, sometimes to the extent that you will need a hex editor to fix them. If you use a web-friendly text editor then just select utf-8 and save away. You may need to convert older files, and it is best to be consistent and save as utf-8 everywhere. Don't forget that one big advantage of utf-8 is that it is ASCII-compatible, so the transition is easy. " http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/11759.htm That seems to indicate that it is an issue with the way that Notepad saves files... though I can save as UTF-8 in Notepad and it seems to work fine for me, no BOM displays. Odd. The post is old though, so maybe it's no longer applicable. I don't fully understand the difference between ANSI and UTF-8 myself... Basically, it seems like they are different character sets that allow you to save a range of characters, and UTF-8 is preferred, since it can store more characters. Someone may have to help me with me explanation here -- I checked Wikipedia but most of it is very technical and went over my head. The point is, it sounds like UTF-8 is the way to go, maybe just don't use notepad to save the files. I wouldn't usually suggest using Notepad anyway, at least go with a text editor that has tabs and code highlighting and such.

No, it shouldn't affect your PHP at all (well, with the exception of removing the symbols from displaying of course). It won't change any functionality though.

Take a look here: http://www.plus2net.com/php_tutorial/php_drop_down_list.php doing a google search for this information may be a good starting point as well.

Sounds like that is your solution then -- make sure you are saving them as ANSI rather than UTF-8.

If you are using Notepad, it may be as simple as making sure you are saving it using "ANSI" encoding during the Save As process, rather than "UTF-8" (there is a dropdown in the lower left hand corner of the save as box, just below "Save as Type"

You have Outlook on your computer... but do you actively use it to send and receive email? If not, you won't be able to find your SMTP this way. As I said before, your best bet is to do a search for your web access provider and "SMTP"

What program are you writing your code in?

For Outlook... (this may vary slightly depending on which version of Outlook you have, but either way, you should be able to find this information if you edit your email account details) Keep in mind that I don't have Outlook on this computer, so I'm going from memory here: -- Go to Tools > Email Accounts -- select the "View or change existing email accounts" option -- I believe there is a screen that allows you to select your email account, so do that... -- After you select your email account, another screen should pop up that will allow you to edit your account information -- in that popup, under "Server Information" there should be a field for "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) -- that is the SMTP address you need. Using that address, you would then edit this line of your php.ini file: SMTP = localhost to use your SMTP address, rather than localhost.

Usually, you would enter it as your outgoing mail server in Outlook / Thunderbird, Mail.app -- whatever email program you use. If you let me know which program you use, I should be able to help you find it. If you don't use one, I'd suggest doing a Google search for the name of your internet access provider and "SMTP" -- most companies will have it on their website. If you can't figure it out, just skip that part and come back to it later. Or, if you have web hosting, you could upload your files there and mail() should work.

Well, frankly, most of the code for the admin area probably needs to be rewritten, since I did most of it a couple months ago, and I think I'm a bit more knowledgeable on PHP now. It's something that I'll have to do over the next couple weeks, and probably isn't quick and simple. I'm not sure if I can sell my PHP skills at this point... I think I have to do a bit more learning first. There definitely is a difference between doing basic PHP (includes, forms, validation, etc) and doing a full web app.

I want to... But I really need a project of some sort to expand my PHP skills, and writing blogging software -- at least, something basic -- is one way I could do that. Yes, I could easily use Wordpress or CMSMS, but I'm hoping that I can pick up some development knowledge by doing it myself. Then again, it may backfire if I never get around to it, and don't post on my blog or update my site as often because of that.

Thanks! I'm especially happy with the PNG zoom image overlay on the thumbnails in the portfolio section (a last minute addition), and, oddly enough, the 404 page I came up with. Next step -- add additional work to the portfolio, and work on coding a basic CMS system... I probably need something to help manage my portfolio items too, rather than having to add them all manually, so I'll have to work on that eventually too.

Just to clarify, you need to have a mail server to send messages -- that's just the way it works. You do have a mail server -- it's whatever your internet access gives you, the SMTP that you enter if you use Outlook, Thunderbird , Apple's Mail, etc. For example, since I am hosted through Cox Communications, they assign me a SMTP, which is "smtp.west.cox.net". What SMTP you have will depend on the company you use for internet access.

Thanks for moving the post. OK... Usually I would suggest trying to avoid using the mail() function from your local machine. Anything that deals with mail() I usually test on my hosting account. That said... it should be possible to get it up and running, it's just a matter of editing the php.ini file. Basically, you need to adjust the SMTP setting in the php.ini file. Here is an article that should help with that: http://www.sitepoint.com/article/advanced-email-php/ Take a look at the PHP Email Setup section.

I should also mention... Sitepoint (http://www.sitepoint.com/) is another useful resource.

I really don't know how to test for that... it'll depend on the host, probably. You'd need to contact them. That said, you really should be using a proper email campaign monitor like I mentioned above. Sure, it won't be free, but it will be less hassle for you, provide a more professional appearance and people have the option to opt out if necessary.

My guess is that most hosts won't allow you to send that many emails because of spam reasons -- they can't be sure what your intent is. Mass emails probably should be done through Campaigner, Mail Chimp or Constant Contact, rather than via PHP's mail() function. My guess is that if you own your own dedicated server and have total administrative control, you may be able to do this, but not on the average hosting plan.

Take a look at some of the podcasts here: http://www.killersites.com/magazine/category/web-design/business-of-web-design/ And this might help a bit: http://www.killersites.com/forums/topic/44/starting-a-web-design-business/ There is a business of web design section in this forum that might be of some use as well.