Customers return to blank form after validation error in IE !

grwd

Help!
Two months ago we switched from mailto forms to PHP forms with mySql back-end.
Since that time our product orders dropped by half.

Last nite I re-tested the form using Mirosoft Internet Explorer (ver. 6) and found that after a field validation error, the customer was taken back to a BLANK form.
(This does not happen using Netscape7.1 with which I had done most of the testing.)

We guestimate that we have lost over 100 orders (so far) due to people either becoming frustrated or confused by this form behavior.
PLEASE help me solve this problem.

To test, go to http://www.tgm.org and click on the "Free Book" link on the left.
The order form is for a free book. (This is a LIVE form. If you don't want the book sent to you, enter "PHP TEST" as First Name.)

thorpe

Since that time our product orders dropped by half

you say that like you are blaming php for the problem. im afraid this is normal behaviour (http is a stateless proticol) and unless you write some code to handle it, well, it wont handle it.

its pure luck that netscape doesnt do things this way.

there are a few different ways to handle this, one way is to use sessions to store the data submitted by the form. if you need to go back to fill in more form fields, the fields you previously filled in can then be populated by the data stored in sessions.

im not sure if your looking for 'help' coding the solution, or whether you are looking for someone to do it for you, but without seeing the relivent code we cant be of much assistance.

grwd

I would like you to take a look at the files.
There are 3. The form, functions.php and process.php
I am hesitant to publicly post our files, however, I would gladly send it to you via email attachment if that would be ok.
tim@tgm.org

bradgrafelman

shrugs My IE cached the results for me, so that when I clicked "Back" it kept the 'PHP TEST' value.

A simple solution, instead of sessions, would be to echo the form again instead of a back button. Near the top, but some nice big text that stands out saying "Error! You did something wrong! Bwhahaha, no free book for j00!" (or something similar 😉).

That way, when you echo the form, you can do it like so:

<td><input type="text" name="email_address" size="40" value="<?PHP echo $_POST['email_address']; ?>"></td>

and so on, so that PHP echo's out the data they sent, including the erranous data so that they have a chance to make corrections/modifications.