About Help Desk .. click it
the Personals and the FAQs
cut and paste -  beginner help
design help for new webmasters
what is HTML and all that
help with images
free stuff - really
guest book, e-mail, and all that stuff

just another form

Using forms to get information .... continued ....

only an image

A typical FORM box - and the HTML used to create that is
What is your name?<INPUT TYPE=text NAME=name SIZE=24>

What's that all mean? INPUT means what follows is an opportunity for user input; TYPE=text means that the user enters text (instead of clicking); NAME=name means that the user reply will be saved as the value of 'name'; and SIZE=24 means make a box 24 columns wide for the input.

So after your visitor has entered his/her name in this box, and your form knows that the visitor response is called 'name', what happens when your next INPUT line asks for their address and that INPUT also includes NAME=name? You guessed it, the form now thinks that 'name' is the address and promptly overwrites the old value of 'name'. So when your form responses are sent back to you .... the visitor name is blank!

How do you stop that? Simple: just make sure that every INPUT response has a different NAME. For a two line address, for example, call the first NAME=address1 and the second NAME=address2. Now your form has two responses and you will receive both of them :)

 ... back ...  ... next ...