Forms can be used to collect information from those viewing your web page. Several methods are available for collecting this information:
Although "mailto:" can be used to quickly send the collected information to an e-mail address, the format of the received information is unformatted and the method itself is not very flexible. A better method available at CSU is to submit the form contents to a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) script, "csuform.cgi," which neatly organizes and formats the collected information before e-mailing it.
Among other things, this script verifies the form is being sent from a valid CSU web address, sorts the information collected if the sort option is chosen, e-mails the collected information to a specified e-mail address, then redirects the person submitting the information to a "confirmation" page. For more information on using this method, click here.
If you're using FrontPage, an even better method is simply to right-click on the form, select "Form Properties," then select "Send to" and fill in the e-mail address of the form's intended recipient.
If you need a bit more sophistication, you can use an ASP (Active Server Pages) to e-mail the forms results. This method is easy to implement here at CSU, gives you more control than the CGI script and is more efficient than the CGI script. For more information on using this method, click here.
Forms which request sensitive information from the user such as social security numbers or credit card information, should encrypt the submitted information as it is sent from the user's computer to the server over the Internet. Encryption is accomplished here at CSU through the use of a Verisign secure certificate installed on the main web site.
As far as you, the developer, are concerned, there really is nothing you need to do special when creating a secure form. The only difference between a secure form and a non-secure form is that the secure form must be placed on the www.colstate.edu web site where the Verisign certificate is in place, and when referencing or linking to the form, you need to use the "https" protocol. For example, if you created a form called "myform.htm" and you wanted the information submitted from that form to be encrypted as it is passed from the user's computer to the server, you would:
1. Forward your form to the CSU webmaster to be placed on the CSU web site.
2. Reference or link to the form using : https://www.colstate.edu/secureforms/myform.htm.