Part 11. Adding Fill-in-the-Blanks Forms

A form is a part of a Web page that collects information from your visitors by prompting them to select options from lists, check boxes, and to use other such form fields . When finished supplying information, the visitor clicks a Submit button to send the data to the server to be processed .

Creating the part of a form you see is easy ”in fact, some of the templates include ready-made forms. But the part you see is only half the form; the other half is the script , a behind-the-scenes program for collecting and processing the data that visitors enter.

How you handle the script depends on how the server where you will publish your page is equipped (see Part 12 for more information). If the server is equipped with Microsoft software such as FrontPage Extensions or Windows SharePoint Services , you can forget about the script and configure the form processing from within FrontPage. If not, you'll need a programmer to create a script for you.

This part shows how to add the visible parts of a form to your Web page and gets you started on dealing with the processing. I recommend that you consult closely with the administrator of the server where you will publish to set up the processing of your form.