Also see:

To Customize and Adjust Your Thank You Page - highly recommended

Mini-Lesson in Creating New Form Fields

You may also want to check out the tips.html file located in your download.

Thank you.
Enjoy.

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To learn more about the PHP that is installed on your website's server, we have included the file phptest.php which contains just the following line of code:
 
 

Complete Instructions For Basic Installation

Web Form Designer Instructions:

Note: It is assumed that you read the system requirements page on the BestWebForms.com website. The coding language PHP is needed for this program to function. Most servers today have PHP already installed. A Linux server is also highly recommended.

Now Here We Go:
 
The instructions may sound a little complicated, but if you follow all the steps, you shouldn't have any problem.

It is best if you create a new sub-directory to upload the entire Complete Web Forms Package  into. The below example sub-directory is called "your-directory-name". You could name it "forms" or "forms-bwf" for example.

Once you have uploaded all the files into a directory on your server, you are ready for
the final steps.

NOW THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On a Linux server, your main folder is usually called "public_html", but not always. Create a folder/directory called "forms" inside of the "public_html" directory, or on some servers "htdocs", or your main directory. Set the permissions to 777 for the folder/directory you uploaded the forms package into (called: forms).

The file configbwf.php needs to be writable. Set the permissions to Command Mode 777.

On your server, if you DID NOT created a new sub-directory, then just make configbwf.php
to be writable. Set it to 777.

Also set the folder named "temp" to be 777. The "temp" folder is mostly empty, but is needed for the form called contactus-attachment.html to function.

Setting the Command Mode is easily done with any ftp program, such as CuteFTP, available at CuteFTP.com. They have a free trial. Using CuteFTP, just "right click" on the file or folder on your server and scroll down to "properties". Then enter 777.

Note: If setting the permissions to 777 does not work on your server, then try setting the permissions to 755.

Note: When using an FTP program, make sure that when you "right click" on a folder that the folder finishes "loading" before setting the permissions. If you see the files still "scrolling" behind the "properties" window, then you need to wait a few moments. When the files finish loading, then you can set permissions.

If your hosting company does not allow you to set permissions, then it is possible to make your changes directly to the configbwf.php file by opening it into a text editor and entering your choices there. Then upload your changed file. This can be a bit difficult for beginners though.

NOTE FOR WINDOWS SERVER USERS: Our Web Forms 3.0 is designed to work on servers with PHP installed. Not all Windows servers have PHP. See below. Also, Windows servers use a different method of setting "permissions" for your files. You will need to log into your main hosting account to change permissions as needed.

If your website's server does not have PHP installed, then there are basically 2 options for you:

There are basically 2 options for you:

1. Switch to a Linux hosting company. We can fully and confidently
recommend these 3 hosting companies. Our Complete Web Forms Package works
perfectly on them, and they are all around $5 per month.

They are:
www.a2Hosting.com
and
www.ixWebHosting.com
and
www.HostMonster.com.

2. You can use our Easy Hosted Web Forms Solution. The main difference
is the web form is hosted on our server and there is a $4.95 hosting charge
per month. But you can still customize your form and choose the entire
"look" of it, etc. Your visitors will most likely never notice that the form
is hosted elsewhere.

Here is the link to click on or to paste into your browser:

https://bestwebforms.com/cart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=69&products_id=187
 

About Our Web Form Designer - Important: There are some hosting companies that do not allow their customers to set permissions. If this is your case, then open the file configbwf.php in your text editor, and make changes to it directly. Then upload it to your server.



Now let's continue with the Web Form Designer:


After you have uploaded everything to your websites server,
point your browser to loginbwf.php (inserting your own website url in the link below):

http://www.insert-your-website.com/your-directory-name/loginbwf.php

or:

http://www.insert-your-website.com/forms/loginbwf.php - recommended
 
or:
 
http://www.insert-your-website.com/forms/adminbwf.php

or:

http://www.insert-your-website.com/adminbwf.php



ADMIN LOGIN:
The default username is admin
AND the default password is also admin

So enter those into the login screen.

It is highly recommended that you change the default username and password to something easy
for you to remember. We, at BestWebForms.com, do not have access to your username or password. So you must make certain to write it down.


Security Choice Settings

There are 4 Security Choice settings.

Security Choice A: Full CAPTCHA image security. If you view your adminbwf.php on your server, and you do not see the images under Security Choice A, then this means that your server does not have GD Support for True Type Fonts and for Free Type enabled. To learn more, you can go to: http://www.BestWebForms.com/GD_Support.php. Choice B will most likely be your next choice.

Security Choice B: This Security Choice is not a CAPTCHA, but it is a random rotating image character script. The letter code is created by rotating images of letters, which a human being must match, and a computer cannot read. It is very secure.

Security Choice C: This Security Choice is not as secure as Choices A or B. Instead of using images of letters (and hiding the image names in the "back-end" programming), the program uses actual browser text.

Security Choice D: This has the least security, but might best be suited to those who just don't wish to be concerned about spam. Your email address is still hidden from spam robots that search the web retrieving as many email addresses as the robot can find. Your email address is not visible to these spiders because your email address is in the "back-end" of the programming.
Caution though: Without the user needing to type in a security code, it is still easy for a spam robot to "click" the submit button and send you spam.


In the Web Form Designer, set up the email address you want your emails to be sent to.
The Web Form Designer does not "create" an email address account. You need to do that separate from this program through your website server's administration interface. It is recommended that you use a brand new email address. This way, no spam robots will be aware of the email address. Make sure you test your new email address to make sure it is working and that your email program is "fetching" the email. When your email program, such as Outlook Express, is set to retrieve email from a specific email address, then the delivery and receipt of your email will occur more quickly.


Now preview your form: First press a "Save Changes" button.
Then preview a form by clicking on a form link. You can also link to your forms
from your website by copying and pasting the URL that appears in the browser address line of
the window that opens:

http://www.insert-your-website.com/your-directory-name/formbwf.php?f=1
Or, with the section of the above url "f=1", the "1" is for the contact form named "contactus-classic.html". If your form is a different one, like "Contact Form - Complete" (which is contactus-complete.html), then the end of this link would be "f=2".

Note: Linking to your form in the above way does not use an iFrame method. An iFrame actually creates a page within a page on your website. It is the same method that Amazon uses for its affiliate stores and is supported by all browsers.


Using the iFrame Code Snippet is highly recommended:

To insert your form into an existing page on your website (with an iFRAME code snippet), click one of the "Generate iFrame Code" buttons and then copy and paste the code that appears in the box (right click with your mouse) and insert the copied code into the code of your webpage where you want the form to appear.
 
Remember to click the "Save Changes" button.

You may want to adjust the width and height of the iFRAME, and you can do that by modifying the
'width' and 'height' attributes:

---------
 
Important Note: It is best to shorten the "path" code in the iFrame code snippet.
 
For example:
<iframe src="http://www.insert-your-website.com/forms/formbwf.php?f=1&iframe=yes" width="425" height="1000" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
 
Can become:

The above is a very smart thing to do for everyone, because some browsers might see the "http" as a "3rd party script" and choose to not display your form. This is also recommended if you are using a SSL certificate for a shopping cart. This way, the SSL certificate will not see the "http" as a non-secure item.
 
---------
 
Once you have pasted the iFrame code snippet into an existing webpage, then you can name the page anything you want, and then link to it from within your website.
For instance, if you named it "contact_me.html" or "contact_me.php", the full url would be:
 
http://www.insert-your-website.com/contact_me.html   (or with the .php extension).


Once you've finished your Web Form Designer session, click the "Logout" link to log out.
It is highly recommended that you log out of the Web Form Designer.

That's it!
Use the Web Form Designer and iFrame Code Snippet. It is easiest.

You are done.

But if you wish to, you can program the configbwf.php file directly. Read below.
 

More Form Configuration

Customize Look And Feel

Mini-Lesson in Creating New Form Fields

It is usually best if you create a new sub-directory to upload the forms into.
But there are some rare server situations where it can be best to just load the files
into the main, or root, directory.
 
Make sure to preserve the directory structure as it is in the zip file that you downloaded.
 

After uploading all the files to your server, and using the Web Form Designer (see above), point your browser to:
http://www.insert-your-website.com/your-directory-name/formbwf.php?f=1.
The number "1" is the classic contact form. But you can change that number to any form number you wish to use.

(Note: If you have used the Web Form Designer and copied and pasted an iFrame code snippet into an existing page on your website, then the address, for example, may be:
http://www.insert-your-website.com/contact_me.html .)

If you uploaded the files to your public_html directory ('htdocs' or 'www' on some servers),
the URL may well look like:

 
If you uploaded the files to your-directory-name/ the URL will look like:

**************************************************


Google Adwords Conversion Tracking Code:
 
You will see the code:

$google_conversion_id = "1234567890";

You don't need to change the google tracking ID number. It is a made up one. The rest of the google tracking code is on the "return" page thank_youbwf.php. You do not need to change that either. If you decide to start google adwords tracking, then just replace "1234567890" with the conversion ID number you receive from google.

If you feel that the conversion code is not tracking properly, then you can hard code it.
Paste the below into your thank_youbwf.php page. Replace 1234567890 with your own number.
 

*********************************************

 
More Form Configuration

 
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Required Fields Code: 
Forms are located in /templates directory.
Each form has 2 hidden fields for validations:

Code:

<input type="hidden" name="required_fields" value="First_Name,Middle_Name,Last_Name,Gender,Birth_Month,Birth_Day,Birth_Year, Place_of_Birth,Address,City,State,Zip,Home_Phone,Cell_Phone,Contact_Phone,Email_Address, Comments,Security_Code">

 
By default most of the fields are required. If you would like to make some of the fields not required just remove them from the list. You will also want to remove from the fields you do not wish to "validate" the:

Books have been written on HTML coding, so the purpose here is not to teach the basics,
but just to give you some "pointers".

The folder to go to is the /templates folder.
There you will find all the forms. You may customize any of them. You may also "mix and match" various features you wish to include in your own form. By "mix and match", I mean to "cut and paste" a section of one form into a section of a different form.

There are quite a few people who do not know the "mouse short cut" for cutting and pasting. First find the section of the code you wish to copy. Then hold down the left mouse button to highlight that section. Then, while still hovering your mouse over the highlighted section, take your finger off the left mouse button, and instead "right click" the right mouse button. This will allow you to more quickly copy and paste. It avoids always having to go to the top of your menu to select "file", then "edit" or "copy", etc.

For the purpose of this lesson, I will focus on using Microsoft FrontPage 2003 for editing. It is a little easier for beginners. But if you have a straight html editor, or wish to use "notepad", then that is the best. But because FrontPage is more "visual", I will use it here.

The method I will explain is to first look at your form in "Design" mode, which is the view of your form that is not just code, but you can actually see the fields and such. Then I will have you paste the actual code you want into "code" mode. This is the best way to insure that all the code you need ends up in your form. FrontPage has a few "bad habits". This is why we always switch to code mode.

Here we go:

This is the suggested method for beginners:

Step 1. First, open the form into FrontPage, or another similar editor. We will use the contactus.html form as an example. We will add a new field below the "subject" field, and give it a new name.

Step 2. In FrontPage, using the "Design" mode, highlight the table row for "subject". 4 cells should now be highlighted. Then, in the bottom left of your screen should be a "code" button. Click on it. Carefully scroll down using the scroll bar on the right side of your screen. You should see the highlighted code. If you don't, then you must have clicked your mouse somewhere in the code area, and the blue highlight went away. If you can't see the highlighted text, then repeat step 1 above.

Now you should see the below code highlighted:

Now copy this highlighted section of code by "right clicking" your mouse. The above is the "table data" <td> for the "subject" field "table row" <tr>. The basic rule in HTML is: Between every "table row" set <tr> and </tr>, you need to have "table data" <td> code here </td>. 

Step 3. You will now need to create a new "table row" <tr> to hold your new field area. Remaining in "code" mode. Directly below the above code, type in:

Now you should see:

Step 4. Paste the code you highlighted between your new <tr> tags.

Now you should see:

Step 5. Now you can flip over to "design" mode if you wish to see visually what you have accomplished. Notice that now you have a "subject" field directly below the other "subject" field.
So we will need to rename the new field.

So ask yourself these 2 questions:
What do I want to name my new field?
and
Do I need this field to be "required" to be filled out by the user?

For this example, let's call the new lower field "my_dog".

So let's make the changes below:

Look for this code:

Let's add the required element:

If you do not wish to have the new field be required, then do not add "my_dog" to the required fields above. Also, make sure to delete these sections of code from the new "dog" field you added:

A note about our forms:
Just about all the fields are written to be required to be filled out by the user. This is sometimes asking too much of the website visitor. So I encourage you to think hard about your required choices, and to delete the required status of fields that you can live without the user filling out. 

So if you do not need the field to be required, then the table data code would be:

As far as editing more fields in our other forms, the same goes for the other types of fields you might wish to add. The basic method is to study the code exactly as it is written for each type of field. Then change the names and required fields information accordingly.

This concludes our mini-lesson.

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