Adding a eMail Form in Custom Web Pages

Ok, this thread gets a lot of views, but there is a good bit of incorrect information and misconceptions that have been added to it over time. So, let me see if I can clear things up a bit... (I am the FTH system developer.)

1. This approach depends on using MAILTO:, and therefore may not always work. MAILTO: requires that an email client be defined and usable on the end user's computer. An "email client" is generally an email program that is usable when you are not using the internet (like MS Outlook). Generally, webmail is not an email client unless it has an extension program (e.g., Gmail Notifier) usable when not using the internet, or a browser that can route the email request to the appropriate webmail website (e.g., Chrome). Not every user will know how to set up an email client, so using an approach that depends on it is potentially unreliable.

In the future, I will probably add an internal MAILTO handler to intercept those links and handle them via code rather than depend on users having an email client installed.

2. *Never* put <!DOCTYPE>, <html>, <head>, <body> or anything similar (the end tags) into any web page content you create for FreeToastHost. I already handle those as part of the website template, and your web page content is inserted into the template by my code, so those things are already handled for you. If you ignore this, you will cause a web page bug and potentially mangle your website.

3. To provide additional defaults for the email, you just need to extend what is in the MAILTO for the form tag. You can add &body=mybodytext to supply the body text for the email. You can also provide a cc address this way, if desired. You will have to replace spaces with the space code %20 to make everything work, though, so this may be a good bit of effort.

3. If you choose to use this MAILTO approach anyway, you will need to create a new custom page, and make it public. If you are inserting html tags as in the above, make sure you switch to Source view in the editor first.

4. My opinion? I would recommend using Google Forms for a more flexible, easier to set up approach. Google Forms can also be embedded in a FTH web page. (I have seen it.)