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paulc12@mindspring.com

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Posts posted by paulc12@mindspring.com

  1. Andrea, thank you for the html-form website. I took a quick glance at it and it looks like a good review. I will look at it when I can spend some quality time with it.  Hopefully in the next few days.

     

    Stefan, to answer your questions...   I have tested all the forms many times.  They always work, with the exception of forms under development that I missed something with, but once I got them running they were consistently fine.

    I know when the form (or rather the email) has failed because in my code shown above, the "URL to another webpage" for the "success" value is another webpage where the visitor can click a payment link (PayPal) of their choice. Then they complete payment on PayPal. When there is a failure I am receiving the PayPal payment notification (like I should), but not the email that was generated with the form before they got to PayPal.  The flow is like the following:

     

    My donation webpage (with the form to generate the info email) > my webpage with payment options with links to PayPal > PayPal > returned to my thank you webpage

     

    So, when there is a failure, I get the PayPal notice but not the info email.  For this type of donation (memorial) there are several information items needed, such as next of kin, next of kin address, and more...  Thank goodness the payment process works great, but the embarrassing thing here is asking the donor to provide the information a second time.  That's not acceptable service.

    I had not thought about what people were putting in the fields as a possibility for this failure.  I'll see if I can get to the email server logs, that's a good idea.  I might not have access to the logs but I'll check. 

     

    I am wondering too if some of the form hiccups may be happening when the donor completes the form with certain types of phones or devices.

     

    Thanks for your help and food for thought!

     

    Paul

  2. Hi Andrea. Sorry it took so long for me to reply. I've been busy and trying to keep up.   The HTML form is very basic, the method is 'post' to a 'cgi-bin' script that processes email, nothing special at all, and it has worked for years with very little problems until recently.  The following is a sample of part of the code.

    <form method="post" action="/cgi-bin/cgiemail/memorialprocess.txt">
    <label for="required-memoryofname"><strong>
    In Memory of</strong></label>
    <input type="text" name="required-memoryofname" size="50" /><em>
    - Required</em>
    <label for="nextofkinname"><strong>
    Next of kin</strong></label>
    <input type="text" name="nextofkinname" id="nextofkinname" size="50" />
      
    yada, yada, yada...more fields
    <input type="submit" value="Proceed with Payment" />
    <input type="hidden" name="success" value="URL to another webpage">
    <input type="hidden" name="failure" value="URL to an 'Oops, missing required info' webpage">
    </form>

     

    Something causes me to not receive the email occasionally.  I know, this is wide open all over the place, but I'm just wondering what could be influencing the intermittent issue. I don't believe there are any configuration problems with form coding or cgi-email because the forms work nearly all the time and worked for years. If there was config issue the form wouldn't work at all. So, what's left? I verified email spam filters are not blocking the emails and most of the time I receive th emails. I am not sure where to look.

     

    Thanks,
    Paul

  3. Hello.  I manage a not-for-profit website that has several HTML forms that generate emails to me with information such as name, address etc.  The forms have worked great for many years with very few problems. However, in the last couple of months there have been several intermittent instances where a website visitor completed the form, clicked Submit, but I never received the email. So, either the email was not generated, or something prevented me from receiving the email. My spam settings do not block the emails. If I try the form myself as a test, the form always works fine and I receive the email.

     

    I am wondering if there is a problem with some devices such as specific phones types that are unable to generate the emails when a form is completed.

     

    Would anyone have a suggestion as to where to look for the source of these intermittent problems and how to avoid them? 
     

    Thank you in advance for any help that you can offer.

     

    Paul

  4. Thanks for the reply and suggestion. I think you are right, the user opened a cached version of the page and sent the email with data from the older page. I was able to do a bit of a test today that seems to indicate that's what happened.

     

    It sounds like PHP would be a very good way to go. I haven't ventured into PHP yet so that might be a bit much for me at this time. Would it be possible to do something with javascript that would force a webpage to refresh when a user visits the webpage? Would a forced refresh of some sort override a local cached file? Just wondering if there would be options to PHP. Thanks for your time.

  5. Something happened today involving an HTML form on a website I manage and I don't know how it could have happened. The cause of the problem doesn't seem like a problem with the form itself but maybe a symptom of something else happening. The HTML form is used for class registration. I last updated the webpage and form on 5/16. Today (on 5/23) I received a registration form email from the form, however the options selected were they way they looked prior to 5/16, not matching the current webpage on the server. It's as if there are two webpages, the current webpage and the previous version of the webpage, and the person completed the previous form/webpage. But there is only one form file on my website.

  6. I am experiencing a problem with the Dreamweaver CS5 Synchronize function. When I select the 'Delete remote files not on local drive' option on the Synchronize Files window, the 'Preview' screen lists many files that should not be deleted. System files and folders are identified that should not be deleted, such as '/cgi/cgiecho', '/log/raw/etc', '.htaccess', 'access.01..' and on and on. In Manage Sites I have the Root Directory defined as the root folder of the website. I have the Web URL defined as the URL of the website.

     

    Of course I cannot proceed with the delete remote files function as it would mess things up in a big way. But at the same time, since I cannot do the delete I am unable to remove the legitimate image files that I actually want to delete. It's not practical to individually click the files in the Preview window that I don't want to delete (in order to avoid deleting them) because there are well over a hundred of them. I could simply delete the remote files individually but there are many files in the images folder and it's not practical to scroll all over the place trying to find the files that I need to delete.

     

    I've been over it again and again and cannot figure out what is causing it. I have another website on another server that is working fine with the 'Delete remote files not on local drive' option. The Preview only identifies the files that I really want to delete. I went to Adobe website to try and find a link to send an email to support but the webpage that probably has the link displays a 404 and cannot be found. I have searched many forums to see if anyone else is having the same issue as what I am seeing and could not find any.

     

    One last question... Do many of you avoid using the file management tools in Dreamweaver and opt to use a separate FTP application instead? The weirdness I have seen in the DW file management tools make me wonder if they are safe to use. Thank you in advance for any assistance or suggestions.

  7. The more I read about DOCTYPEs the more confusing it seems to me. There are a lot of opinions about it. I am redoing a website, all the html and getting into CSS farther than I ever have. Before I get too many webpages redone I want to determine once and for all which DOCTYPE I should use. I am using Dreamweaver CS4 and noticed if I create a new HTML document using one of the default templates, here is the DOCTYPE that is included;

     

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

     

    One opinion I read said Dreamweaver plugs in a good DOCTYPE to use. I have no idea whether that is true or not. The website is not going to be super fancy or very technical, I mainly just want solid HTML and CSS. I would like to be able to successfully validate the HTML. So which DOCTYPE does everyone recommend? Is there an agreement on which one would be best? I appreciate any help on this. Thanks.

  8. The first link is page not found. I am going to put Firefox on a different computer than the one that DW is loaded on. I keep one computer fairly free of experimenting around with different browsers. The website updates keep steadily coming and I don't want to have any problem issues on the production computer. I think I will just live with the message, but thank you for your time and input!

  9. When I click on the Flash Player link under "Firefox/Safari/Opera" it brings up the webpage to download "Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.45.2" Windows, Internet Explorer. It seems like the webpage is checking to see what browser I am using, which is IE. Either that or their link is going to the wrong webpage. This is what I ran into before when I went searching for the plugin. Thanks for the suggestion though.

  10. I have looked around for the answer to this question and found some information, however, I cannot seem to find the correct plugin by name, and some of the info seemed to have a lot more steps than what should be necessary to stop the error.

     

    Whenever I click 'Live View' in DWCS4 I get the warning 'The Flash Plugin was not found. To view Flash content in Live View install the Netscape/Firefox Flash Plugin from Adobe.'

     

    I don't use Netscape or FireFox on the computer that I have DWCS4 loaded on so I'm not sure why should I have to update the plugin in the first place. However, to try and stop seeing the error all the time, on a few occasions I have gone to the Adobe website and could not find a driver that specifically says 'Netscape/Firefox Flash Plugin'. Does anyone know for sure which plugin to download? Or is there a way to tell DWCS4 to stop telling about it?

     

    Thanks,

    Paul

  11. Here is a revised version of the webpage I was having trouble with. http://home.mindspring.com/~paulc12/example4g.htm This version is better than the original and looks good in IE7.

     

    In DWCS4, in the Design window and Live View, there is additional space appearing above the 'Some Stuff' heading and after each of the last LI's. The extra spaces are not present in IE7. The inconsistencies are sure frustrating.

  12. Thanks for the suggestions on which browsers to test with. That is the same list I was thinking of.

     

    Also, thanks for the advice on setting a width on the outer element and adding padding to inner elements. That sounds like a good approach and I will give it a try!

  13. Thanks for your help and suggestions, I will check the links out. Overall I am having a hard time understanding what is the best way to locate elements precisely where you want them on the page (including the padding for text) without setting a width and using margins/padding on the same element. I've been reading several CSS books and have run through tutorials, and I know there is a lot more to learn. The books only seem take you so far.

  14. Thank you for the help. This has given me some things to think about. When you suggested avoiding setting a width/height and using margins/padding on the same element, can you tell me which element you were referring too? I am so new to this much CSS my head is spinning. When I view the webpage with the revised code it does look a lot better. The bullets are missing from the LI's but I can probably run that down. I am viewing the page in IE7. I can also check it in IE8 on another computer. Unfortunately I don't have a computer with IE6 to check it. I bought DWCS4 a couple months ago and it keeps giving me messages all over the place regarding the doubled margin bug, so I probably have a lot of problems to fix. Thanks for the link that helps show the issue. Have you used Browsershots before? I was planning on trying that after I get a little further. Thanks!

  15. ok, got it. You'd need to do something like this...

     

    <div id="content-right">
      <h2>Some Stuff</h2>
      <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Praesent aliquam,  justo convallis luctus rutrum, erat nulla fermentum diam, at nonummy quam  ante ac quam. Maecenas urna purus, fermentum id, molestie in, commodo  porttitor, felis. Nam blandit quam ut lacus. Quisque ornare risus quis  ligula. Phasellus tristique purus a augue condimentum adipiscing. Aenean  sagittis. Etiam leo pede, rhoncus venenatis, tristique in, vulputate at, odio.</p>
      <h4>Header</h4>
      <ul style="float:left; width:350px"><li>list items here...</li></ul>
      <ul style="float:right; width:364px"><li>list items here...</li></ul>
    
      <p style="clear:both">your content here...</p>
    
      <ul style="float:left; width:350px"><li>list items here...</li></ul>
      <ul style="float:right; width:364px"><li>list items here...</li></ul>
    
      <p style="clear:both">your content here...</p>
    </div>
    

     

    I imagine you'll need to a change your CSS on #content-right though -- probably removing the margin-left and floating it right.

  16. Welcome to the forum!

     

    To be honest, I'm not completely sure what you are trying to do -- perhaps an image/rough screenshot of the final result might help?

     

    It seems like you are trying to set up two columns, so in that case, why don't you do this:

     

    <div style="width: 350px;" class="fltlft">
       <ul>
       <li>Maecenas urna purus</li>
       <li>commodo  porttitor</li>
       <li>augue condimentum adipiscing</li>
       <li>ornare risus quis ligula</li>
       <li>Maecenas urna purus</li>
       <li>Maecenas urna purus</li>
       <li>commodo  porttitor</li>
       <li>augue condimentum adipiscing</li>
       <li>Maecenas urna purus</li>
       <li><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Want "<strong>Special List</strong>" (to the right) below this list</span></li>
       </ul>
    
    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 153, 51);"><strong>Special List</strong> - This text needs to be located under the list to the left.</span></p>
    
    [place anything you want to appear in the left column within this div]
    
    </div>
    <div style="width: 364px; margin-right: 4px;" class="fltrt">
    <ul>
       <li>Maecenas urna purus</li>
       <li>commodo  porttitor</li>
       <li>augue condimentum adipiscing</li>
       <li>ornare risus quis ligula</li>
       <li>Maecenas urna purus</li>
       <li>commodo  porttitor</li>
       <li>augue condimentum adipiscing</li>
    </ul>
    
    [place anything you want to appear in the right column within this div]
    
    </div>
    

  17. This is my first post here. I've used CSS in the past for some text formatting. I am building a new website to replace a table-based design site. I'm trying to use style sheets and not use tables. I'm getting into lots of CSS I've never used before. I have two layout problems and spent lots of time trying to resolve them. Maybe the solution is simple and I just cannot see it. A link is included to an example of the problems.

     

    http://home.mindspring.com/~paulc12/example.htm

     

    Problem One: I want the Special List (text in green) to align against the left edge of the div under the list on the upper left (red text).

    Problem Two: I want the More Important Stuff (in green) to align against the left edge of the div under the list on the lower left (red text).

     

    I have tried using Clear in various ways but that pushes the More Important Stuff (green text) past the floated box on the left. Have tried including the top two lists in a div and the bottom two lists in their own div but that doesn't seem to help. Lately I have been asking myself if CSS is really worth it and are tables really that bad? ARGH!

     

    Thanks,

    Paul

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