Intake Forms

Creating a contact form to use on your website is a great way to collect information from potential clients. Rather then simply listing your email address or phone number, the contact form will require the user to enter important information like name and number, and also give the option to ask for extra info like comments or questions. The simplest way to create a form will require the viewer to send the email themselves, while using a .php file to send your form will automatically send you the information as soon as the send button is pressed.

Don't know PHP? Don't worry, there are many websites available that will create your form and the PHP file for free! With a few alterations to the .php file, you can customize your form and add extra intake fields.

For example, I use a site called The Site Wizard to create forms. It will quickly generate a form to use, but has limited intake information. You will need to create an extra .html page to use for your ERRORS and THANK YOU pages after someone hits send. If you need to add extra, customized information, then you can copy and paste the existing form lines, and change the name or question. After you do this though, you must alter the .php file so that the new lines get sent. Basically, read over the PHP and everytime you see a line that refers to one of the intake form boxes, duplicate that line and change the name to match your new box. For example, if there was orginally Name, Address, Email, and Phone, but you added Comments, then you would need to find everywhere in the PHP that Name, Address, Email, and Phone are listed, and create a new line for Comments. If you don't alter the PHP, and only the form, then the new info you have added will not be sent to you in the email.

It might help to read up on PHP before you tackle it, unless you have experience with other programming languages and HTML.