can YOU get this? form problem

[madastrota]

I've just made two attempts to explain a weird problem to Voda Support and they can't seem to figure out what I'm talking about. Can you? I don't know how else to explain this problem. This is the second message I sent when they couldn't understand the first one.

"I have a page on my website that displays contact information. I decided to add two new elements: an invitation for people to join my e-mail list and a convenient form where they could submit their name and e-mail address straight from that page.
So I opened up that page file in Blue Voda and added a marquee at the top and put a simple form right below it. The form consists of a "Name" field, an "Email" field, and a "Send" button. Once I added those new elements I had to move the other graphics down to make room. After making all those changes I clicked the Preview button which opened up the page in a web browser and I was able to see the page they way it would look after being published. When everything looked just right I attempted to publish the page. Then I opened up the website itself to see the changes. But nothing was changed. The page still looked exactly the same as before. So I tried republishing the page several times with no success. I even deleted the newly added form from the page and moved stuff around but the changes would never publish. Basically the page was stuck somehow. I don't know how else to explain it. I could make changes to the page file and see the changes in the preview browser but I just couldn't publish the changes.
Before reporting this problem to you guys I tried a little test. I renamed my "contact" page file then created a new file and called it "contact". I imported a random picture to that new page and published it. When I reopened my website and clicked the "contact" link, I saw the new page with the random picture so I knew it was still possible to make changes to a page with that name but something was obviously wrong with the original page file.
So I rebuilt my "contact" page from scratch, starting with the background picture. I published it and it was fine. Then I added the text box and published it and it was fine. Then I added the link buttons and published, then added the marquee and published again, making sure that with each new thing added, the page would publish with the new changes. Then I put in the final element - the form. When I published again there was no form. As a further test, I changed the position of the marquee in the page file and tried publishing but the page was stuck again. Once I had tried publishing the page with the form on it, it was stuck and could not be changed anymore. In order to make further changes to this page I will have to rebuild it again from scratch because the page file itself has somehow become corrupted. And it was obviously the addition of the form that caused it.
I hope that's an understandable description of the problem. I know it's really long. Sorry about that. But this little problem is really killing me. My potential customers should have a convenient way to contact me directly from the contact page."

Is it really that hard to understand? Can anyone out there help me with this?

[myjaydee]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

I'm nowhere near an expert, but have been spending a lot of time building my own site and have come across a similar kind of problem.

I think that it might be a conflict between the marquee and the form. They will both run on a Javascript. Try removing the marquee and publish. Fingers crossed that might help.

Could you let me know if that works please.

[davidundalicia]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

Please supply a link to the page................

[Alien Dude]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

The Chances are that the page is now has a php extension, if you had a page before with the html extension then added a form to it this will in using the bv form wizard change the extension to be php. so if your page was once name contact.html it is now contact.php . try when at your page in your browser taking the html out and replacing with php.

Not sure Eggsactly as you have not supplied a link but bet it might be.

[Tom Finley]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

When you first published the page without the form, it published as "pagename.html". When you published with the form, it became "pagename.php". That means there are two pages with the same name on the server, except one is html and the other is php. I have found that this can confuse things. Use FTP Manager (under "Tools") to delete the html page from the server. Might not work, but you don't know until you try.

[madastrota]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'll address them all in turn.
myjaydee: i read your response first and tried it immediately. what happened when i published the .html page with just the form, sans marquee, is that the form and the rest page did indeed publish as intended, but in the background there was all this code covering half the page. that was pretty weird.
davidundalicia: the page is currently at tonyreymusic.com/contact.php --- which brings me conveniently to the final response for
Alien & Tom: you're right! it worked! it was a pain in the sphincter to go through all my other pages to change the link extension but the form is up now.
Just one problem..
how does this form actually work? i created it using the wizard and now that it's up i'm not sure what i expected to accomplish with it since there's no message field. (note that the wizard didn't provide an option to include a message field.) but i tested the form using an alternate e-mail address and when i hit "send" i got the HTTP 404 NOT FOUND page. there was also a message in my inbox with no information in it. it just had this line- "Values submitted from web site form:"
hrm .. any thoughts?

[Tom Finley]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

The wizard does have a message field, it's called "Text Area". As far as the rest goes, I'm not much help there--someone else will have ideas. When I run into trouble I either delete and start over, watch the videos 14 times, or modify, modify, modify until the stars align.

[davidundalicia]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

You can always add the "text area" box to your form by double clicking the form.
You probable got the 404 message when it tried to find your success page which you need to create and publish yourself.

You might also want to learn how to validate your fields here:

[madastrota]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

ok, so the advice i've gotten so far has been extremely helpful .. you can view the results here .. and i sent myself a test message and it works! only problem is that the user still gets a funky error page so they won't realize that their message has gone through .. so i guess i need to find out how to link this form with the success and error pages .. not sure exactly what that means and i've been poking around trying to find that out .. i attempted to create said pages within the Form Properties box by clicking "Browse" for each one - then creating a new folder within the default location - then naming the files - or something - i don't know, i was just following the trail .. couldn't find anything in the FAQ about it .. help?

[davidundalicia]

Re: can YOU get this? form problem

Have a look in the tips and tricks - step by step visual tutorials