Forum Moderators: mack
The thing is, I am doing this for an Instructor of mine and I do not have access to uploading or anything at the university. So far, I have only made her basic pages.
So, the main question is this, can I make a registration form for her that would connect even though I do not have access to the server? If so, is there anywhere that would have a good clear explanation of how to get the form to connect to the server?
Thanks
Randy
FORM METHOD=post ACTION="http://www.myserver.com/deal_with_my_form_data.pl"
You don't have to use Perl to handle the data, but basically the form submits the data to a CGI program at the server, that program receives the data and deals with it.
The HTML page with the form can be on any remote PC, so long as that computer has a network connection to the server (eg: an Internet connection)
Matt
Anyway, to do what you're thinking, you're going to have to create a program that accepts input (as in the post above), process it into a database, then respond with a 'thank you' page. Plus clean the data, etc. etc.
I suggest you forget the database idea. Instead, just have the form sent to you by email. You can do this with a 'form to email' program. The difference is, these form to email programs are a dime a dozen all over the internet. Find one and get it installed on your website.
When someone completes the form, you'll get an email. Cut and paste the information into Excel, and away you go.
I think that way will be much easier than getting up to speed on how to create and upload a program to manage a form and a database. (your way is more flexible, but a much steeper learning curve).
I suggest you forget the database idea. Instead, just have the form sent to you by email. You can do this with a 'form to email' program. The difference is, these form to email programs are a dime a dozen all over the internet. Find one and get it installed on your website.<<<
I am making pages for her, shipping them to her and she is uploading them to the server. Does that make more sense?
I have done the e-mail route before.This would be my preferred method. However, this is for a class and the teacher would like for it to be submitted to a database, so I don't have any choice.
You've got a whole host of things to find out, what database is available, your database login informatin, what programming languages are available to you. Plus you'll have to develop the script/program to read the data from the from (which will be passed to the form using the method described above) and do all that database connection stuff.
Plus, once it's in the database you've got to write a program to retrieve the data in some format too probably.
I'm not sure if anything like this is available for free download - I would typically design this in as part of a larger system.
This isn't a very tough job, but it's not an immediate thing either if you are a newb. If you're class is programming, you've got some homework to do. If it's not a programming/web class, it may be more than you want to tackle.
I am afraid that this is too big of an undertaking for everything she is wanting and my experience.
Randy
I think you're right, this is likely a bit much for you. Stick to the form to email thing.
Someone mentioned in a thread in the site supporters area I think something about a program that scraped info from emails and dumped it into excel.
