How do I change the order?
The email output can be ordered via two different means. The first is to put the Fields in the same order that they occurred in the Form. The second allows you to sort the Fields alpha-numerically and have them be emailed in the sorted order. Sorting is turned off by default, and requires the use of an EMAIL-FORMATTING DIRECTIVE to turn on sorting. Copy and paste the line below into your Form and it will turn on alpha-numeric sorting:

Can I use a different separator between Field names and values in the email?
Yes. The default separator is ': '. Through the use of an EMAIL-FORMATTING DIRECTIVE you can use a different separator in the email. Copy and paste the line below into your Form and it will change the separator to ' = ':

Can I have the Form sent to more than one recipient
Yes. The RECIPIENT MAILER DIRECTIVE takes a list of email addresses as its value. The line below will sets the RECIPIENT to be both scottw@cgibuilder.com and support@cgibuilder.com:

How do I make sure that Field X is filled out?
The ERROR-CHECKING DIRECTIVE 'NOTBLANK' is used to ensure that a particular Field has data in it before Form submission is allowed. The example below shows how to make sure that the Field named 'First_Name' is not blank:

What kind of error checking is available?
The following ERROR-CHECKING DIRECTIVES are supported by Advanced Form Mailer v1.5:

Why doesn't the redirect work?
The 'THANKURL' directive sends the users browser to your thank you page. Some web servers require that this URL be a fully qualified URL, or at least be a fully qualified path. This means that './my_thank_you_page.html' will only work if your server does not have this more or less braindead limitation. Notably, if you are on a Netscape server, relative URLs will not work for the 'THANKURL' directive, you must specify a fully qualified URL.

Can I specify more than one Field per CHECK directive?
Yes. On all but the 'SELECT' directive, you can specify a list of comma separated field names, in the 'CHECK:TYPE:...' hidden field.

Can I call the script via GET?
No. The Advanced Form Mailer only supports POST requests. This is probably a good thing all things considered. GET requests can be truncated (since they are passed as an environment variable to the back end CGI script). Since data from a POST method submission is passed on STDIN (STanDard INput) which has no such potential limitation.

Why do I get 'Internal Server Errro ...'?
Typically, this error is presented because the script tried to execute a program and failed. With the Advanced Form Mailer, the program it tries to execute is sendmail(1). Some web servers just kill the CGI script when it tries to execute a non executable program. I know for a fact that Apache 1.2b6 (which is my development server currently) does.

It says it can't find sendmail, what should I do?
Advanced Form Mailer uses sendmail(1) to send the mail to the address(es) listed in the 'RECIPIENT' Field. Every time it starts up, it looks in 3 or 4 standard places for the sendmail(1) program. If it can't find it, it dies giving you this error message.

What use is the SELECT CHECK?
The 'SELECT' check type allows you to require the user to choose a value from your select list. Typically you would set the value of this to be the string you made the first line of your select list. This way, if the user doesn't choose a different option from your select list, the Form will tell them that they need to.

What Directives does the script use?
Advanced Form Mailer makes use of 4 types of directives: mailer directives, info directives, email formatting directives, and error checking directives. All directives are case sensitive, and are ALLCAPS (the EarthLink specific version of Advanced Form Mailer allows certain mixed case mailer directives for compatibility reasons). MAILER DIRECTIVES

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="RECIPIENT" VALUE="...">

This directive specifies the recipient email address for the Form data. The value must be a valid email address. No error checking is done against the value you specify (the script protects you from bad data from your users, not from you). :)
The value can be a list of comma separated email addresses.
This directive is not optional.

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="THANKURL" VALUE="...">

This directive specifies the URL to redirect the client's browser to if they correctly filled out the Form.
This must begin with either a ('/' or with 'http://....). This directive is not optional.

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="SUBJECT" VALUE="...">

This directive specifies the subject of the email generated from the contents of your Form. If unspecified, this defaults to 'MAILTO.CGI FORM DATA' in the current version of the script. This is an optional directive.

<INPUT TYPE=HIDDEN NAME="FROMADDRESS" VALUE="...">

This directive specifies the email address the Form generated email should appear to come from. This can be useful for advanced applications of this script. This also allows you to easily filter mail that came from your online Form. This is an optional directive.

What happens if I use a directive name as the name of a Field?
The short story is that you shouldn't, since this is likely to cause Advanced Form Mailer to behave in a way unfamiliar to you.
That being said, this allows you to use Advanced Form Mailer as an even more powerful Form handling tool. It lets the user of your Form control the way the script behind the Form behaves. In SOME environments that is a very good thing. Usually though, that isn't what you want to let happen.