The link to the backend script is mentioned in the `action` attribute of the HTML form tag. After you receive your first form submission, the email template section of your autoresponder contains the email, name, and message form fields as embeddable tags. Please note that your form must contain the type=”email” field to receive the email address to send auto-reply emails. The server then passes the data to the script specified in the action URL — myform-processor.php in this case. With this data, the main script can create a database of form submissions, direct the user to another page (such as payment), and send an email. In this step, you write the code to create the form. The following code is required for a simple form: Please check the full article (including the zip example) in the source: www.html-form-guide.com/contact-form/php-email-contact-form.html However, this method is not compatible between browsers. It`s also not user-friendly; A warning message is displayed when the form is submitted. For more information about this method, see: Email form with mailto This HTML example creates a form that asks for the contact`s name, email address, and message, and includes a button to submit to the form. There is no function in HTML to send the form submission directly to an email address. What about „mailto”? Using mailto: You can set the scope of the form to `mailto`. In this case, the Web browser calls the e-mail client to send the form submission to the specified e-mail address.
Another thing to keep in mind about this code is that it is not sent directly to email addresses, but it can be opened in an email client or tool window to submit the form. An important difference is the „action=contact.php part. This part of the code causes the form to be sent by the page when it is submitted. Recall that this was not an option in the first example. Whether you want to convert more visitors into leads, gather information for your sales team, or create more loyal brand ambassadors, forms are essential to an inbound strategy. Now that you`ve created the form and added all the correct corrections based on your design settings, it`s time to create the email part. HTML forms on the website must be included in FORM tags. Several parameter options are available, the most common are: action – This allows you to tell the form where to go after submission (usually the filename of a script that reads and processes data from the submitted form).
Name – It`s usually a good idea to give your forms a name that is used to uniquely identify your form on a particular page. method – the value must be POST or GET. Forms usually need to be configured to use POST (since GET appends form data to the page URL, which is almost always a bad idea for security reasons). There are other methods, but we won`t discuss them here. That`s why form backend platforms like Getform are a great way to email your HTML forms. Another advantage of a forms backend platform is that it has no framework or language dependency and works well with static sites like Hugo, Gatsby, 11ty, and Jekyll. The visitor`s web browser uses HTML code to display the form. When the form is submitted, the browser sends the link information mentioned in the „action” attribute of the form tag to the backend and sends the form data to that URL.
Before we jump into the process, let`s break down some form basics. As many answers in this thread already indicate, it is not possible to send an email from a static HTML page without PHP or JS. I just wanted to add that there are some great solutions that take your HTTP request generated by your form and create an email from it. These solutions are especially useful if you don`t want to add JS or PHP to your website. Sometimes it can be good to offer your website users the option to upload a file. To do this, use the HTML field type file. If you use this option, you must also add an additional option to the FORM tag enctype=”multipart/form-data” The browser selects the link (URL) mentioned in the action attribute and sends the form submission data to that URL. The web server passes the form submission data to the script in the action URL (yourform-processor.php in the example). Now, the backend script can send emails, save form submissions to a database, or even direct the user to a checkout page.