This page lists answers to frequently asked questions about the Feedback Form Script generated by thesitewizard.com's Feedback Form Script Wizard. You should also check the list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about the Wizards in General if your questions are not answered on this page.
If your question is not listed here, please also read More Frequently Asked Questions about the Wizards
All email messages have a "From" header that contains the email address of the sender. The feedback form script sets the "From:" header to whatever email address your visitor enters. Unfortunately, some free web hosts do not allow scripts to set the "From:" header in email messages to an address that is outside your domain (or perhaps even to any address that is not the address you signed up with).
For example, if your domain is "example.com", the "From:" header needs to be something like "some-address@example.com" for the script to work. Or, if the email address you used when you signed up with the host was "you@example.com", the only email your visitor can type in that will work is "you@example.com". Since your visitor is unlikely to have an email address at your domain or the same address as you, the email address he types in will be rejected by your web host, and his message will not be sent.
At present, you have only two ways to fix this problem:
Chances are that this is because your web server does not support PHP or Perl. If you are running the form on a free web host, or the free web hosting provided by your ISP (Internet provider), this is probably the case. The solution is to use a commercial web host. (You can also find out which web host I currently use on the Which Web Host Would You Recommend? page.)
On the other hand, if you are running the form on a server that you administer yourself, and you know for certain that you have already installed PHP and/or Perl, you might want to check that you have set up the PHP (or Perl) MIME types for your Apache configuration files correctly.
Yet another possibility for this error is that you uploaded the feedback form script with a filename like "feedback.php.txt". Check the filename using your FTP program. If the form has been uploaded with a ".txt" extension, please read "How do I save the feedback form in Notepad without the ".txt" extension?" to find out how to fix the problem.
If you get this error, it means that PHP was not set up correctly on your web server. Contact your web host and let them know the exact (and full) error message you received. If you are running your own web server on Windows, read my tutorial on how to set up PHP 5 on Windows and PHP 4 for some hints. Read especially the section on "SMTP Server".
Please read my article, Perl CGI Debugging: Solving a 500 Internal Server Error.
If you get a "File Not Found" error after you submit your feedback form instead getting your Thank You page, it's probably because you didn't create and upload your Thank You page. Alternatively, you gave your Thank You page a different filename from the one you gave the Wizard. Or, you may have placed your Thank You page in a different directory (folder) from the URL you gave the Wizard. The same applies for the Error page.
If you don't know how to create a Thank You page, just use your web editor and type the words "Thank You", save it with the filename you gave the wizard, and upload it to the location you told the wizard earlier.
If you get the contents of your feedback form script when you submit your form instead of a "File Not Found" error, see Why do I keep getting back my feedback form when I hit the submit button?
Here are some possibilities:
Did you upload your feedback.php or chfeedback.pl file to the correct directory?
Did you name the file correctly? For example, "feedback.php" is not the same as "feedback.php.txt". If you used Windows Notepad to save your file, there is a chance that it added an additional suffix ".txt" to the filename you specified when you saved the file. You may not be able to see the ".txt" extension in Windows Explorer, since it hides the extension from you in its default configuration. Check the answer to How do I save the feedback form script in Notepad without the ".txt" extension? to learn how to solve this problem.
If you get a message to the effect that "cannot modify header information - headers already sent", it is possible that when you copied the PHP script to your text editor (eg, Notepad on Windows), you added blank lines to the file. The very first character of the file should be "<?" (without the quotes). If you have any blank lines (or any text at all) preceding those two characters, delete them.
This error is also a side-effect of other errors. If you are getting other error messages besides this, fix the problem caused by the other errors. To do that, read the relevant FAQ item for that error. Once you fix the other errors, this message will go away on its own (assuming you have not added any blank lines to the script).
If a spammer is using your feedback form to send other people spam, you need to upgrade your feedback form script to the latest version. To do this, simply return to the Feedback Form Script Wizard and generate a new copy of the script. Replace the existing copy of the script on your site with the new one. The current versions reject messages with injected email headers (which was how spammers were able to use the script as a relay previously).
Note that if you generated your script from this site prior to 28 February 2006, there's a chance that your script is vulnerable to being used as a spam relay. Please return to the wizard and generate the latest version to be safe.
Incidentally, the script will not protect you (the webmaster) from spam sent to you through your feedback form. After all, the script is designed to send you any mail sent by your visitors, junk or otherwise. To avoid spam yourself, consider setting up spam filters in your email software. Some web hosts also have spam filtering software set up in their email servers which you can activate in order to filter out junk mail.
There are numerous possibilities for this. If you're getting the "Thank You" page after you run the feedback form script generated by the Feedback Form Wizard, but do not receive the mail sent, check the following:
If you're not even getting the "Thank You" page, you may have to make sure that your web host supports PHP or Perl CGI scripts in the first place. See also the sections on Why do I keep getting back my feedback form when I hit the submit button? and Why do I not get the Thank You page when I submit the feedback form?
Furthermore, if you are getting error messages when you run the script, check the relevant portion of this FAQ for the solution to your problem.
Simply return to thesitewizard.com's Feedback Form Script Wizard and generate a new copy of the script with your new email address, and replace the existing version on your site with the new one.
No to both questions. The Feedback Form Wizard takes the email address you supply and plugs it into the script it generates for you. Your email address is not recorded anywhere, and does not show up in my web logs. Later when you upload the script to your web host, the mail is sent by your web host's computer directly to the email address embedded in the script. The mail is not routed to me or any other party.
Note that you do not have to trust me on this matter. Feel free to use some dummy email address in the Wizard, and then manually change it to your real email address on your own computer before you upload the script to your web server. You should, however, do this only if you are technically savvy and know how to modify scripts on your own. I will not bother to reply to messages requesting help on this: if you create a script that doesn't work because of your modifications, you're on your own.
(Note: this question is for those who receive the email message when visitors submit their message but cannot find the visitor's email address and name. If you don't receive any email message at all, see the answer to Why do I not receive any mail when I run the feedback form script?)
Theoretically, you should be getting your visitor's name and email address. These are sent to you in the "From" header of the email message. They are also duplicated in the "Reply-To" header.
Some free web hosts, however, configure their system so that the "From" header always reflects the email address you gave to them when you signed up. They usually do this to prevent people using their system to spam others. If so, check to see if you can find the visitor's name and email address in the "Reply-To" header as well. Most email software as well as web mail sites allow you to view all the headers of an email message.
If they have modified the "Reply-To" header as well, my suggestion is to go with a better web host. Check out some of the commercial web hosts. Commercial web hosts usually do not play such tricks with your email.
You might also want to try putting a check in the box labelled "Use line feeds to separate email headers" in the Advanced Options section of the Wizard and regenerating the form again. Using this option might help to solve some rare cases where a deficient mail system wreaks havoc with the mail sent by the script, with the symptom that the "From:" header appears to be missing (from the point of view of your email software).
UPDATED (27 February 2006): The latest version of the feedback form script generated by Feedback Form Wizard also embeds your visitor's email address and name in the message body itself, so you should always be able to read your visitor's name and email address even if it is missing in the "From" header.
Starting with version 2.0 of the Feedback Form Wizard and Script, the PHP feedback form script requires your web host to have PHP 4.1 or above. Check with your web host to find out if this is the case. The feedback form script will not work correctly with PHP 4.0 and below. On PHP 4.0, it will probably be able to display the Thank You page and send you an email message, but that email message will not contain any of the information that your visitor sent.
If you are seeing the contents of the feedback form script itself, your web server probably does not support Perl or PHP. Free web hosts and the free hosting that comes with your ISP (eg AOL) usually do not provide Perl or PHP facilities. Sign up with a commercial web host instead.
If you are using the Perl version of the feedback form and are sent back to the feedback form page after submitting, chances are that you entered the path of the feedback form script into the "Path of sendmail binary" field of the Wizard. That is, you probably entered something that ends with "chfeedback.pl" or "chfeedback.cgi". This is incorrect. You have to find out from your web host where they put their sendmail binary. It's usually in their documentation somewhere.
If you are using either the PHP or Perl version, you must make sure that the URLs you enter for the "Thank You" and "Error" pages are different from the URL you enter for the "Feedback Form". If you entered your feedback form URL for your "Thank You" page, your visitors will be taken to your feedback form after they send their message.
There are a few possibilities for this.
If you are trying to insert the HTML form code into your web page, and find that instead of getting the form fields on your web page, you get the HTML code being displayed, it means that you are inserting the code into your page using your web editor's What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interface. Essentially, you need to either switch to the editor's raw HTML editing mode or, alternatively, use your editor's facility to insert HTML code into your web page.
If you are using Dreamweaver, you can read my tutorial on this at: How to Insert Raw HTML Code in Dreamweaver.
Nvu users can read this tutorial instead: How to Insert Raw HTML Code in Nvu.
If you use KompoZer, please see the article How to Insert Raw HTML Code in KompoZer.
See the article How to Upload a File to Your Website Using the FileZilla FTP Client.
You will have to do this manually, yourself. If you are using the PHP script, I explain how this is done in my two PHP tutorials, How to Write Your Own Feedback Form Script and Improving Your Form to Mail (Feedback Form) Script. But remember: if you break my script with your modifications, you will have to fix it yourself.
Sorry, I don't have the time.
Before you upload your feedback form script, check to make sure that the script is saved with the correct filename. For the PHP script, the filename should be "feedback.php". For the Perl script, the filename should be "chfeedback.pl". If your file is saved with a name like "feedback.php.txt" or "chfeedback.pl.txt", the script will not work. If this applies to you, you're probably trying to save the file on a computer running Windows.
To fix the error, open Windows Explorer (also known as "My Computer" on the Windows desktop and the Start Menu). Navigate to the place you saved the file. Click the "Tools" menu on the menu bar in Explorer (the menu bar is at the top of the Explorer window, underneath the window title). Click the "Folder Options" item in the popup menu that appears. A dialog box appears. Click the "View" tab at the top of the window. Look for a setting "Hide file extensions for known file types" and uncheck the box beside it to disable it. Click "OK".
You should now be able to see your file as "feedback.php.txt" or "chfeedback.pl.txt". Now click once on the filename. Explorer will now allow you to change the filename. If this is not true, select the filename and hit the F2 key on the keyboard. Delete the ".txt" extension, leaving the filename as "feedback.php" (without the quotes) or "chfeedback.pl" if you're using the Perl script. Make sure there are no trailing dots or spaces - that is, make sure the filename is really "feedback.php" and not "feedback.php." with a trailing dot or the like.
When you hit the ENTER key, Windows will issue a warning about the dangers of changing filenames. Allow the name change to take place.
If you are interested, a more detailed account of this, along with how you can avoid this problem in future, can be found in the article How to Save a File with Notepad Without the TXT Extension.
You can't. As made obvious by the wizard, when you were asked to select the PHP version of the script if your host supports PHP, or the Perl version if your host supports Perl, you need a web host that supports either PHP or Perl (or both). As far as I can tell, Google Page Creator supports neither. Get a commercial web hosting account instead. Incidentally, you may want to read my article on why it's better to use a true web editor than a site builder.
Please read this page (the page you are looking at) for the answer.
Incidentally, vague questions like the above are of no use. You need to define problem more specifically (eg, what error messages you got, what happened when you submitted the form, whether you received any email when you submitted the form, whether the Thank You page was displayed, etc). Being more specific will help you locate the answers on this page.
Copyright 2000-2008 by Christopher Heng. All rights reserved.
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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about the Feedback Form Wizard
