Quick Formmail Script Setup
The instructions provided with formmail can be rather complex. Here are the simple steps to setup formmail with your hosting:
The steps shown on this page are:
1. Edit the contact.htm
2. Install or download the script
3. Edit the script
4. Check the contact.htm
5. Upload the script
6. CHMOD the script
7. Test the contact form
If the above link is not working: The creator of the formmail script (Matt) offers to run the script from their website for a monthly fee. Click here for info on this option. Allwebco does not support and has not tested this option. All support would be provided by http://www.formmail.com.
Step 2:
Edit your contact.htm or quotes.htm and replace "your-web-domain.com" with your domain name in three places. Click for details. (NOTE: You may need to edit the formmail.cgi in the template contact.htm or quote.htm to formmail.pl with the script you downloaded above.)
If you have Allwebco hosting or do have a hosting cgi-bin: Now that you have downloaded formmail, use a plain text editor like Notepad and edit the refers in the formmail.cgi or formmail.pl. Be sure if you have formmail.pl that you edit your contact.htm or quotes.htm and change the "formmail.cgi" to "formmail.pl" on the "post" line (first line of the form). To edit the refers, open the formmail script, and find the following line (about 30 lines down):
@referers = ('scriptarchive.com','209.196.21.3');
Change the above shown in red to your domain and your IP. If you do not know you IP you can edit this like the following:
It's best to put the www in the refers also even if you know your IP. You can have all three like the following (using your IP number from your hosting company):
Step 4:
Check the "contact.htm" or "quotes.htm". If you have uploaded formmail.cgi the HTML page "FORM" line should call for .cgi. If you uploaded formmail.pl the HTML page "FORM" line should call for the formmail.pl. Be sure the HTML page area indicated in step #2 (above on this page) is calling the correct script. .cgi or .pl. Click for more details.
Step 5 and 6:
Now you must upload the formmail.cgi or formmail.pl to your hosting area using FTP software. Once the script is uploaded, you must CHMOD 755 the file if you have UNIX type hosting. To CHMOD 755 a script right click on the script in the FTP window, choose "CHMOD" then type 755 in the small box. Click below to see this visually in CuteFTP.
NOTE: If you have a Windows hosting setup rather than UNIX, you must contact your hosting company to set the formmail file permissions.
Step 7:
Now open your contact.htm on your website and test the form. If you are getting a "file not found" error when you submit the form, do the steps on this page from the start again, or, click here to see other possible problems with formmail.
Note about the e-mail you can use:
Formmail will not let you e-mail outside of your Domain name. e.g. If your Domain is momswharehouse.com your e-mail address on the contact.htm or quotes.htm can not be an MSN.com email address or an AOL or any other, it must be ????@Momswharehouse.com. This is a security feature in the formmail script so you cannot relay e-mails out of another mail server.
