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Mailform is designed to receive your form and email the content of the form "to" specified email recipients in html format or plain text.

Your html form can contain any number of data input elements. These form elements and their values will be listed in a plain text email or into an html template of your own creation.

Important note! Your form element names can not have spaces in them.

1. The recipient(s) of the email are specified in a input element named "mf_to" which is typically a hidden form element.
   This element would look something like:
          <input name="mf_to" type=" hidden" value="info@bobsboats.com,salesmanager@bobsmarina.com">
   This element is manditory and if excluded will result in the display of this page.
   
2. Another manditory field is "mf_from". This field could be an email address input field which will cause the resulting email to appear to be originated from the email address entered.....hmm. Or you can make this hidden with a fixed value.
        <input name="mf_from" type=text" >
   
3. You can also "cc" people on the email by including hidden a form element named accordingly as:
        <input name="mf_cc" type=" hidden" value="melvin@bobsboats.com,bob@bobsmarina.com"> 
   or "bcc" people as well by including a hidden form element named accordingly as:
        <input name="mf_bcc" value="melvin@bobsboats.com,bob@bobsmarina.com" type="hidden" > 
   
4. Another optional, but highly recommended field is "mf_replyto". If you provide a valid email address in this field this is the email address Outlook will use to reply.
   
5. Another optional, but highly recommended field is "mf_failto". If provided, this is where a bounce goes. Else a bounce goes to mf_from

Form elements that give directive to the mailform program have names which begin with "mf_". These elements will not be listed or revealed in the email sent out.

Form elements with names of your choosing that do not begin with "mf_" will be listed in the email sent out.

For example is you had a form element named "comments" you would see a line in the email which looks like:
      COMMENTS- Please send me a quote  
where "Please send me a quote" is the text entered by a customer using the form.

If you include an element called "mf_message" the content of value of this element will be displayed first in the email.

If you include an element called "mf_subject" the content of value of this element will be used as the email subject otherwise "mf_message" value will be used or if neither are provided the subject will be "Form submission".

A hidden form element called "mf_nextpage" should contain a valid url reference to the html page which you would like to display after submission of the form. You can redirect a persons browser anywhere you desire after form submission.

The users browser will be redirected to this page. <input name="mf_nextpage" hidden" value="http://www.yahoo.com"> will cause the user to go to Yahoo after form submission.

Now for something fancy........

If you include a hidden form element containing a url reference called "mf_emailpage" the mailform program retrieve the html page pointed to by "mf_emailpage" and then uses this page as the body and complete content of the email sent out.

Just prior to sending the email mailform program will parse the html page content and do a find-and-replace function on all form element names and values. The names must be in lower case.

In other words, if you had a response page out there which looked like the following:
   Thank you for your interest. We will send our monthly new letter to you email address at my_emailaddress as you requested.
and the form submitted had an element call "my_emailaddress" the mailform locate the element name in your html page and replace it with the element value submitted.

The best way understand all of this is to see the example provided below.
Replace bob@bobsboats.com in the mail to box with your email address and you will receive an email from this form.
Hopefully you will then understand how this all fits together and you will be able to leverage the mailform program on your web site.

Note this example sends an html email by fetch content from a web page found at http://www.netlatitude.com/mf_example.html  This example directs the user to Yahoo after submission.

Sample mailform