Request for Question Clarification by
gan-ga
on
03 Nov 2002 01:37 PST
Hello ramcorp,
It's very simple to put a form on your website using relatively
easy-to-use HTML, which I could demonstrate for you as required.
The question is, once your visitor has filled out the form, what do
you want to do with the data they have entered?
Essentially, you can either use that data locally, on the user's
computer, to control some other aspect of your page, or you can send
that data over the internet to your server computer.
For instance, you might want the user to enter their height, weight,
age, sex, so that you can then, when they click a button, use that
data, still on their own computer, to run a script you have inserted
into the webpage. That script might process the data, then present the
user with a diet plan. No data has left the user's computer, and there
is no need to run any special software on your hosting companies'
server.
Alternatively, you might like the user's data, when he clicks a
button, to get sent over the internet, to a program you have installed
on your hosting companies' server, so that, for instance, you could
keep hold of that data and use it to make a guestbook for instance.
As you can see, you always need two 'parts' when using forms - a form
to get hold of the data from the user, then a program of some sort to
process that data in whichever way you require.
For very simple applications, you may only need a few snippets of
simple HTML in your webpage, and a very basic javascript or perl
script to do the processing.
There is a vast range of downloadable script out there to do various
more complex jobs.
If you can describe in a little more detail exactly what data you wish
to collect, and what you want to do with it once you've got it, it
will help myself or another researcher to give you an answer that is
much more tailored to your needs.
Best regards,
gan
