Forms Tutorial

Now to explain forms and how they work is going to be a difficult task, but let me start by explaining what forms are. When you visit a web site and they ask you to, fill out a form, for a purchase, or a guestbook, or any number of other functions, that is what forms are all about.

How do they work? Well, the form uses a thing called Common Gateway Interface, cgi for short. Now the best way to explain this is as follows. You upload something to your server's cgi bin, a program, usually written in perl or c++ language. When someone enters information in a form and clicks send, the data is sent to the program that you stored in your servers cgi bin, it processes the information and will send it along to the webmasters email account. This is how the data is transferred from the web page to the webmaster.

The problem with explaining forms is the fact that you have to have access to a cgi bin. AOL for example, doesn't allow you access to a cgi-bin, but they have some pre-written programs that you can use, such as an email one, where the information is sent to you in an email. Now this is fine, but you are limited to that. Most of the free webspace providers do not have cgi-bins to offer their users. So once again forms run into a problem. Now, as I was planning this lesson out, I had to ask myself, do I explain all the tags, etc, of forms, when most people will be unable to use it? Or do I show them a simple way to include forms hassle free? Well, I chose the hassle free way. You see, there are companies that offer free cgi hosting. Which means, they have all these program choices, etc, that they offer. One includes a very simple form section. All you do is fill out a template as to what form you want, and you cut and paste it to your web page. Now the only thing that the company that offers these cgi hosted scripts get in return for this wonderful time saving service is this, a small advertisement, so small that you wouldn't even notice it, so it's really a good deal. Some are better than others, so just trieal and error will tell you the ones that you like the best. Now some webmasters may scoff at my approach to handling this lesson of forms, but since I'm writing it, I decide what I think is best for my readers. So, here are a few url's that have things like, guestbooks, forms, polls, etc that would be of interest to you. Use them, don't worry about writing the code to forms. If I do get a great deal of emails complaining about my forms lesson, then I will come back and write something a little larger, but if no one really minds, I'll leave it like this for now.

Links to hosted CGI scripts.

• Response-O-Matic - Easy email forms that can be added to your site. Someone fills out the form and an email is sent to you with the results, very cool!
  
  
• Bravenet - They have a series of different free hosted cgi scripts, this is the one I'll generally use cause they have lots of different things you can use, from guestbooks, to polls, to quizzes.   An excellent resource.