Anyone got any tutorials or helpful websites for building a contact form on a web page?
A contact form may be easy to make visually appealing, but it can be difficult to make it function as a contact form if you don’t use server side scripting, like PHP or ASP alongside HTML… A google search found this site that generates code for you depending on the server side language used. In order for one of these to work your server must support the language it’s written in…
good luck with it.
But if you’ve done any programming before and your server supports perl or PHP, then it’s pretty easy.
But he asked for help from web designers, not web developers. 
I’m more a designer than a developer (someday I’ll design my own site…). How much data do you need to collect? For an ultra-simple contact page, list your information (so people can contact you) and offer one or more email links that will generate subject lines within the link. For example, a link that says “Contact me about unicycling” can look like this:
<a href="mailto:you@yoursite.com?subject=Contacting you about unicycling">
Granted it’s not a form per-se, but it’s more in line with your apparent skillset and may be all you need.
I would highly recommend against this method. It will get you deluged with more spam than a Hawaiian during WWII.
Forms are the way to go to avoid this problem, but you’ll need some server back end stuff. Another option is to make an image that contains the text of your e-mail address. If you just put the text on the page, however, not even in a link you’ll get killed by the spam bots.
Yeah that’s the way I have done it previously but as the comment above says it can lead to all sorts of spam so a simple form is a much more secure way of setting up a mail to.
I do know there is some php or asp involved I have looked into it all before but most sites I look at don’t give the code or complicate things far too much, all I really want is to get access to a decent php file and a decent form that work together and then play with it so I can figure out how it works so i can start to set them up when designing sites for others.
Cheers for feedback so far folks 
You can’t just throw a php file on a website and have it work, however. You need to configure your server so it works with php. You also need to instal a mail server if you want it to e-mail things to you. How much control do you have over your hosting?
I too, am working on a website (for a local restaurant) and need some suggestions as to good references.
I’m looking for a good overview reference on website mechanics – not just html, but the interrelationship of the various elements such as perl, php, sql, asp, etc etc. What and where things are accomplished, and what things accomplish them.
I’m fairly new to the website side of things but have a strong programming background (embedded systems, perl, and such), so it would be fantastic if the reference was able to avoid a too-low-end approach while still being readily assimilatable.
Similarly, I need a reference on the practicalities of web design such as designing-in color, using images and size, designing for different displays, dealing with spam (as above), etc etc.
Finally, I’m looking for a reference that talks about the esoterics of website design – the user’s perspective, the pros and cons of various layouts, testing effectiveness, long-term maintenance and freshness issues, etc.
I’ll also be going to the bookstores, both online and offline, and searching the Internet, but I thought I’d ask you guys since I’m sure there are more out there than I could read in a year.
Thanks in advance!
I do a LITTLE web design on my own but now i have swapped to sites such as Joomla…Drupal…etc but when/if you use a email for make sure you put you email in a hex form…it helps aviod spamming ie…
<a href="mailto:smee56@gmail.com?subject= Well Self Explainatory" title="">smee56@gmail.com</a>
spammers cant pick out your email easly…
I’m not sure how much this will help, but http://www.webmonkey.com/ is where I started to learn about web design and how it all fits together. They have many different articles involving nearly anything you’d want to do to your website.
I am not sure how much control you have over your web server, or if you can even run scripts, but I think various sites offer free web forms. After a simple google search I came across this:
http://www.formlogix.com/CreateWebForms.aspx
I have no idea if those are good or not, but that is just an example. Read up on it (I haven’t) and see if it is good. Or do some google searches for:
free web forms
free web site forms
If I was doing it, I would write a simple form and use the php mail command, which works well b/c that way you mask your email address from spammers. If you don’t know php, or don’t know how to run/control scripts on whatever server you have, it might be best to look for free sites that you will link your html form to.
Another simple solution is to do what was mentioned before with the mailto: command, and just have a link. The key to this though is to encrypt the email address…see below:
that might help with some spam
Cool thanks! I’ll check it out thoroughly.