testing contact form on local server?

Marsha,

Which badge are you working on? Andrew's jQuery course or Randy's PHP course? I'd be more than happy to help answer any questions you have about either -- and yes, you should be able to simulate both projects using MAMP or XAMPP with Mac OS X.

Best,

J.T.

Hi J.T. Gralka

I am working on my own site and am stuck on my contact form (after watching Andrew's and Randy's tutorials numerous times)

And I got MAMP working fine, now, and testing a simple form.

My BIG question-- After all areas are validated and form submitted I would like a "Your message was was sent" to appear just below the form. Not in a new window. Is this possible/

I am going around in circles and brain dead lol

Yep! That's certainly possible. If you haven't already, I would suggest you watch Randy's Integrated Validation Errors course videos. It builds upon the contact form validation content he teaches in his introductory course. Specifically, this intermediate course provides an in depth survey of how to get error and validation messages to display on the same page as the form. I think this is a very well done course, and I think you'll find the validation stuff both intriguing and extremely functional!

If you still find yourself struggling, let me know; I'd be happy to help you through it!

J.T.

How did I miss this? Looks perfect. Thanks!

My site is in HTML. Will this work for me?

You might change the file extensions to .php, but as long as the HTML is semantic, you should be just fine!

I have watched the videos.

How can I put php into my HTML files. I am stuck. Here is an example:

<form class="email" action="contact.php" method="post">

        <p><label for="name">Name&#42;</label></p>
            <p> 
            <input type="text" name="name" id="name" class="required" value="<?php if (isset($name)) { echo $name; } ?>">
            </p>

Never mind ...

I just found out I have to change the file extensions to .php

:-)

Yeah. Apache makes you do that... Also, your form looks pretty good; the only thing I might change is that I would add the htmlspecialchars() function for security's sake.

<input type="text" name="name" id="name" class="required" value="
    <?php
        if (isset($name)) {
            echo htmlspecialchars($name);
        }
    ?>">

I'm not sure how far you've made it through the course, but Randy does cover that at some point. Let me know if you're still having trouble with anything. :)

J.T.

thanks J.T. !

You're quite welcome! :-)

yay!!! Contact Form (seems to be working)

But another BIG question.

My site is a long one pager. Contact Form appears at the bottom just before small footer.

I have changed the -- action="contact.php" --- to---

<form method="post" action="index.php" id="contactform">

But now when I submit the form the page goes up to the top of the site.

How can I get it to remain at the bottom where the contact form is? I have tried it with the nav <a href> " #contact" ---like so---

action="index#contact.php"

Any help, pleaze :/