MailTo Service

We all have websites that ask for information from the people who visit the sites. The easy way to collect information from the user is through HTML forms and to receive this information at our email boxes. A standard way of ensuring that form responses are sent to our email boxes is to create the form tag as:

This method has several disadvantages:

• The email address used by you for automatic submissions is visible to the visitor. He can used it to send other emails / spam.
• The user needs to have a configured email client that can be detected and used by the browser to send email. Most users use the web for checking mail and others visit cyber cafes to check mail. Such users do not have properly configured mail clients.
• The user is concerned that his/her email id will be automatically revealed to the site's webmaster. Most users prefer to remain anonymous over the net. Also, browsers automatically display a warning to this effect.

Due to all these reasons, most sites do not use this method to receive submission mails. What is the alternative? The alternative is to have a webpage that processes the input from the form and sends it to a mail address. However, for this you need to do a lot of coding and host it at paid sites.

So, what do you do? Signup with sites that provide free guestbooks and the like. However, the guestbooks are very general and cannot incorporate any specific questions you may want to ask.

The answer is SeeingWithC's free mailto service. Here, simply by making a minor change to your form HTML, you can make it possible for SeeingWithC to receive your form submissions

What do you need to do? Simply fill out the form below: (This form uses the same mailto service)

After you have filled up the form, wait for me to receive the email, process it, add your name to my automatic on-site database and send you an email. The email will contain your identification number, such as 19. This number should be carefully noted down. Now, you are ready to begin creating your form. Refer to the form above and you need to do:

• In the action tag, instead of the mailto:... address, write:
  "http://www.myjavaserver.com/~seeingwithc/mailer.jsp"
  This is the web-address of my service host.
• Just below the <FORM name=...> tag, add the lines:
  This form uses Mailer service provided by
  http://mm.2cent.me. To learn about the service,
  visit http://mm.2cent.me/mailto.html
  
  Your form will work even without adding these lines, but please let them stay. This is a free service, and I need ads to sustain the service. These lines will not show on your form. Also, it is illegal to use my service on any page without these lines.
• After these lines, add this tag:
  <input type="hidden" name="forMailerid" value="...">
  For the value field, enter the id assigned to you through my email instead of the dots.

This is all!

After the changed, the form shown above will look like:

It is really this easy to get your form going with SeeingWithC's mailto service.
If you have any problem setting it up, have a look at the form above that submits your requests to me. To do this, view the source of this page.
Still in trouble? Contact me at [email protected]

1. SeeingWithC may change the conditions to use the service. The site will not inform anyone of the changed terms, they will displayed here and will be binding on the users.
2. SeeingWithC reserves the right to charge any fees for using the service at any time it pleases.
3. This service does not come with any guarantee that responses will be delivered. Use it at your own risk.
4. SeeingWithC is not liable for any damages that using this service may incur, or which may incur through un-delayed on late-delayed messages.
5. SeeingWithC can discontinue the service at any time without prior notification to anyone.
6. The service can have some downtimes during which the responses will not be delivered.