There are a lot of different form handling scripts out there. But Master Form is special.

Master Form can (all optional):

1. Email the results when someone uses your form. You can specify the format and contents of the email, if you want.

2. Store the results in a database file when someone uses your form. You can specify the format of the database record, including the field delimiters, if you want.

3. Generate custom "thank you" pages, which can be used to
   • provide a printable web page with the form data inserted on the page,

   • personalize the "thank you" page with any data from the form,

   • present critical form field information for confirmation before clicking the okay submit button (one use of multipage forms -- see item 4.), or

   • serve in some other custom capacity.

4. Handle multipage forms, with any number of form pages.

Master Form uses templates to generate the custom emails, specially formatted database records, custom "thank you" web pages, and the pages of multipage forms. Yet, templates are optional for all except the latter.

Master Form templates are easy to learn.

Your web page form has form field names. You use those same names (enclosed in square brackets) as placeholders in the template. For example, if you have a form field named "visitorname" then you would use "[visitorname]" in your template wherever you want the visitor's name to appear. Thus, if the visitor types "William" into the form and you have

          Thank you, [visitorname], for ...

in your template, then the page will be generated as

           Thank you, William, for ...

The templates work the same way for emails, database records, "thank you" pages, and multipage forms -- placeholders are replaced with form data.

Master Form is a commercial program, made for Unix. It should work well on Linux, too. But the emailing functions will not work on NT.

Most of Master Form's functions are optional:

1. If you want to be emailed, provide the address (for custom email formatting, provide the template file name, too). Using a template, you can tell it to send HTML email rather than plain text.

2. If you want the form data recorded in a database, provide the database file name (for custom data record formatting, provide the template file name, too).

3. If you want to present a "thank you" page, provide the URL. Master Form automatically scans the web page to see if any template placeholders need to be replaced.

4. If you want a multipage form, provide the URL of the page following the current one.

If you choose none of the options, Master Form will happily accept form submissions and do nothing with the data!

The instructions are in Master Form's manual.

Oh, I almost forgot. Master Form can help spam-proof your site by not using any recognizable email addresses anywhere in the form's hidden fields. And, Master Form is also multilingual because the month and weekday names that it prints in your templates can be any language or alternate spelling.

I guess that's about enough excitement for one article. Master Form's web address is http://willmaster.com/master/form/ and its instruction manual is available online.

Happy, happy!

Copyright 2000 by William and Mari Bontrager

William Bontrager, Programmer and Publisher
"Screaming Hot CGI" programs
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