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"populate form without database"

Hi, I'm a bit of a novice using Dreamweaver to maintain my website and know nothing about ASP or MySQL etc, can anyone tell me whether I can use simple html or php to populate information from a field into a form on a new page without the use of a database? for example, I want a link from "please tell me more onfo about xyz" and for that text to appear in the form wherby all that they need to add is there email/ phone number etc.

Any advice appreciated.

Hi Scorpion II,

do you mean something like this ?

If you want to get into PHP then I'd recommend PHP & MySQL for Dummies.


JTD

Some good resources for PHP info are W3schools and Tizag.

Both these sites have a lot of good information which will be quite helpful.

On the assisted design front, yes I'd imagine it's something we could do for you. For us to get a better idea of the work you'd be wanting us to do it's probably better for you to Make an Enquiry and we can get back to you.

motomotomd wrote:
> It certainly is possible using PHP and HTML however describing it
> to you via the forum will probably not be simple.
>
> First of all you need to find a way to pass the information to
> the page where the contact form is located. The way I would do
> this would be to create a hyper-link to your new page as
> follows:
>
> http://yourwebsite/form_page.php?message=*your text here*
>
> You can then use the PHP variable $_GET['message'] to retrieve
> this information from the address bar.
>
> Lets assume that your form is using a Textarea where you wish
> the customer to type in their information. You could write the
> Textarea as follows:
>
> <textarea name = "message"><?php
> echo $_GET['message']; ?></textarea>
>
> This would print the message in the Textarea as soon as the
> viewer loads the page.
>
> I hope this makes sense, if not you may wish to read up a little
> bit about PHP before proceeding.

Thanks motomotomd

I guess I've got some reading up on PHP to do then :)
Any suggestions for "a quick idiots guide to PHP" to get me started? Ideally I wanted to pluck a "message" from within the page with multiple choices rather than a single message from the address bar.

Alternatively is this the type of thing that the "Freeola assisted design" scheme could do for me?

Thanks again

It certainly is possible using PHP and HTML however describing it to you via the forum will probably not be simple.

First of all you need to find a way to pass the information to the page where the contact form is located. The way I would do this would be to create a hyper-link to your new page as follows:

http://yourwebsite/form_page.php?message=*your text here*

You can then use the PHP variable $_GET['message'] to retrieve this information from the address bar.

Lets assume that your form is using a Textarea where you wish the customer to type in their information. You could write the Textarea as follows:

<textarea name = "message"><?php echo $_GET['message']; ?></textarea>

This would print the message in the Textarea as soon as the viewer loads the page.

I hope this makes sense, if not you may wish to read up a little bit about PHP before proceeding.

Hi, I'm a bit of a novice using Dreamweaver to maintain my website and know nothing about ASP or MySQL etc, can anyone tell me whether I can use simple html or php to populate information from a field into a form on a new page without the use of a database? for example, I want a link from "please tell me more onfo about xyz" and for that text to appear in the form wherby all that they need to add is there email/ phone number etc.

Any advice appreciated.