Form Troubleshooting

Is it my Host or my Form?

If you have followed the tutorial on how to receive your form results by email, but are still receiving errors or not receiving the form results properly, it's time to do a bit of detective work to find out if it is the form that is not correct or if it is a web hosting issue.

The first thing you should do is to right click on your form and select Form Properties from the menu that appears. In the dialog box that appears, click on the Option button. Go through each tab and see what information is entered. Verify that everything is correct under each and every tab, changing items as appropriate. When you close the dialog box, you will receive a prompt asking if you want to remove the email address. Choose NO.

Now go to Tools > Recalculate Hyperlinks. This forces FrontPage to update all of the hidden VTI files that are needed for the server extensions. Make a small change to the text somewhere on the contact page to force the page to republish. Republish your site. [Note that you need to "publish" your site and not use FTP.] Test your live form again.

If you are still receiving an error, chances are it is a server extension issue. Even if your host says that the server extensions are installed, they may not be set up correctly or may need to be reinstalled. If your server extensions have been reinstalled, you will need to republish your site.

Important Update: If you are being hosted on a UNIX server, be aware that Microsoft stopped supporting the server extensions for this platform in June 2006. Many hosts are discontinuing server extension support for this reason. See the information in the sidebar for more information.

Get a Second Opinion

To determine if this is a hosting issue, you should try publishing your site to a different server. I recommend signing up for a free hosting account through Tripod (http://www.tripod.lycos.com/). There are some special instructions for FrontPage here: http://help.lycos.com/faq.php?categoryid=45

If your form works, then you will know that it is a hosting issue with your current web host and can go back to their technical support department to explain that things work on a different server. They should then be able to track down the problem. If the form just won't work on your server, ask your web host for an alternate form mail script. They probably have a CGI script and should be able to provide you with instructions for using this for your form.

If Nothing Works