Send Email

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Chris Coyier on (Updated on )

1) HTML Form with Inputs

<form action="" method="post">
  <label for="name">Name:</label>
  <input type="text" name="name" id="name" />

  <label for="Email">Email:</label>
  <input type="text" name="email" id="email" />

  <label for="Message">Message:</label><br />
  <textarea name="message" rows="20" cols="20" id="message"></textarea>

  <input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

2) Process with PHP

This could be in a seperate file (e.g. sendemail.php) in which you’d set the action URL of the form to go there. Or, have the form submit to itself (leave action URL blank) and test for one of the values of the form being POSTed and process there.

<?php
       // from the form
       $name = trim(strip_tags($_POST['name']));
       $email = trim(strip_tags($_POST['email']));
       $message = htmlentities($_POST['message']);

       // set here
       $subject = "Contact form submitted!";
       $to = '[email protected]';

       $body = <<<HTML
$message
HTML;

       $headers = "From: $email\r\n";
       $headers .= "Content-type: text/html\r\n";

       // send the email
       mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

       // redirect afterwords, if needed
       header('Location: thanks.html');
?>

3) Test it

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