Im a loser

spoonieluv

Hello everyone,

I'm very new to PHP ( 3 days old ) . Its funny , I havent been able to run one complete script that works , but I still like the challenge .
I am running win2000Pro with II5, and PHP installed, and mysql
I tested my Mysql and PHP they both working fine ,but everytime I try to create a HTML form and post it to a .php I get tons of errors every single time . I have tried about 15 diferent kinds of Formmail php scripts no luck .

Most of the time I get a error like this

Undefined variable

I want to move forward with PHP but this part is fustrating me, and I dont want to go back to ASP

Do I need to change anything in my php.ini
Do I need to install apache server
Is there something I need to modify on my system

Here is the HTML form I would to be sent to a .php then email me the information . Yes thats all im asking

Can someone create me a simple php script that will work with what I'm trying to do

<form action="form.php" method="post" enctype="application/x-www-form-urlencoded" name="form1">
<table width="418" height="287" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td width="140" class="Hometext">Contact Name*</td>
<td width="7"> </td>

			  <td colspan="2" width="271"> <input name="contact" type="text" id="contact" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding: 1; background-color: #C0C0C0" onBlur="MM_openBrWindow('underconstrction.html','STOP','width=740,height=185')" size="20"></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td class="Hometext" width="140">Year of Birth ( i.e 1974) </td>
              <td width="7">&nbsp;</td>
              <td colspan="2" width="271">
              <input name="yob" type="text" id="yob" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding: 1; background-color: #C0C0C0" size="4" maxlength="4"></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td class="Hometext" width="140">Email Address*</td>
              <td width="7">&nbsp;</td>
              <td colspan="2" width="271">
              <input name="email" type="text" id="email" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding: 1; background-color: #C0C0C0" size="20"></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td class="Hometext" width="140">Phone *</td>
              <td width="7">&nbsp;</td>
              <td colspan="2" width="271">
              <input name="phone" type="text" id="phone" style="font-size: 9; font-family: Verdana; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding: 1; background-color: #C0C0C0" size="20"></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td class="Hometext" width="140">How did you hear about us ? </td>
              <td width="7">&nbsp;</td>
              <td colspan="2" width="271"> 
              <select name="hear" id="hear" style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 9; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding: 1; background-color: #C0C0C0">
                  <option>Search Engine</option>
                  <option>Friend/Family</option>
                  <option>News Paper</option>
                  <option>Flyer</option>
                  <option>Radio</option>
                  <option>TV</option>
                  <option>Phone Book </option>
                  <option>Other</option>
                </select></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td class="Hometext" width="140">Credit Situation*</td>
              <td width="7">&nbsp;</td>
              <td colspan="2" width="271">
              <textarea name="situation" cols="36" rows="3" wrap="VIRTUAL" id="situation" style="font-size: 9; font-family: Verdana; border-style: solid; border-width: 1; padding: 1; background-color: #C0C0C0"></textarea></td>
            </tr>
            <tr> 
              <td class="Hometext" width="140">&nbsp;</td>
              <td width="7">&nbsp;</td>
              <td width="92" align="center">

Thank you everyone for helping a newbie

Sponnie Luv

benjy

i find that if i have a lot of things cluttering up my script is causes a lot of errors. so what you should do first is only put the nesecary things in first (eg. leave out style="" etc). then once you have found that the script works add in the style and colours etc. you also should have relavent names for the variables to you dont type them in wrong.
hope thats helped

jpmoriarty

why not start with something that will check that your php installation is working okay, without bringing in things like your mail server into it too?

If you have a php page with just <? phpinfo(); ?> in it, does it display the page properly?
why not have a form with just a text box in it - <input type="text" name="text"> and a submit button, and then write a php page to display the text you entered. THAT is a simple form. What you've got is stupidly complicated if you're still not sure anything's working.
FYI assuming you can at least make the form properly (and it's looking like you're using front page or something, which I'd strongly advise against) on the php page you'll simply need a echo $_POST['text'] (assuming that your form method is post of course.
i would worry about emailing information and option boxes and the like when you're sure everything else works...

spoonieluv

Thank you everyone
Very thanks to jpmoriarty , your right I am going no where fast , I did what you said just created a simple html and echo and it worked fine, as I was doning this I found out that my Dreamweaver was puting in code that was messing up my PHP scripts ( I sometimes code a page and fix it in dreamweaver .

Thanks for the eye opener , please feel free to give me any other advice that will help a newbie like my self .

SpoonieLuv