Re: Cold Fusion advice/help needed

Missy,

What a mess.  I feel for you.

In my opinion, any serious Webhost will offer Perl, regardless of whether
they offer CF or not.  However, whether they have Perl or not, formmail is
made for UNIX.

I'm a bit confused in that you first mentioned that you planned to use
formmail to process the two forms, but now you're asking about a database.
Here's the deal ...

If you want to simply e-mail the form data, you don't need any database.
You can use the CFMail tag to capture and process the data.  If you need to
write the form data to a database, then obviously, you do need to know a
DSN, as well as the table structure and whatnot.

Those hosts don't sound too professional.  They should be taking your calls
and helping you.  I don't know what their deal is, but you don't sound like
the stupid one.

In looking at the code of that monster form, I notice that the names of the
fields are numbered instead of named.  I'm not sure if you meant for them to
be that way, or if the hosting-goons did that for you.  Dreamweaver is
notorious for this naming convention.  Anyhow, I thought I'd point that out
so it didn't cause you any headache when you tried to figure out why things
weren't working as expected.  I hope the project turns around for you.

Best Wishes,

~Val


----- Original Message -----
From: "Missy Scott" <MBScott(at)d-assistance.com>
To: <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 6:52 AM
Subject: Cold Fusion advice/help needed


> Hi all,
>
> Little background:  I did some work earlier this year for a
not-for-profit.
> Just as we got to the end of the project, the hosting company was changed
to
> one that would donate some space to a worthy cause.  Well, that was nice,
> but I had coded for a standard Windows or Unix environment (just your
garden
> variety html) and was going to use formmail for the two forms.  The new
> hosts put her on a Cold Fusion server.
>
> They also provided free maintenance and promised her to take my html forms
> and make them work in Cold Fusion.  Did they?  Sort of.
>
> The short form works.  The problem is the long form, a survey, which has
> quite a few entries (maybe more than 100).  Now, at first, the hosting
> people told me they had Perl.  They wouldn't tell me the path to it.  I
> tried a couple of standard paths (usr/bin/perl and usr/local/bin/perl and
> all that), but no dice.  Do Cold Fusion hosts offer Perl?  Maybe the
> solution is in there.
>
> Of course, what I know about Cold Fusion could fit on the head of a pin.
In
> looking at the shorter form, I could figure out how to make a longer one,
> but I'm not sure about the datasource.  I suppose I would need to know
what
> kind of database to use.  I do understand that CF will support SQL,
Access,
> Oracle, Sybase... I think.  But with a host that wont' speak to me (when I
> call, they are either rude outright, don't know what I'm talking about, or
> the guy who I need to talk to is not there...would I like to leave a
> message?), what am I supposed to do?
>
> Nevermind that they screwed up a couple of pages (I think they were making
> the navigation an ssi, but it was GONE on three pages), nevermind that
they
> "rearranged" a good bit of the pages.  So, of course, being a reseller to
a
> host I really like, I offered to donate some space myself, but the client
> doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.  Really.  I have explained
> until I'm blue.  I'm hoping she'll change her mind on changing hosts, but
> I'm not holding my breath.
>
> My question, I think, is this:  how much support should I need from the
host
> for CF?  Should I be able to just upload a database and write to it?  Am I
> being obtuse or am I just being dumb about CF?  Should I expect support
from
> the host?  In other words, I don't know if I'm stupid or if they are
stupid.
>
> I think it was Peter (lemmegolook) Schonefeld who said, just this morning,
"
> It's when you're screwed by another web professional that you really get
> annoyed - but that's
> another story!"
>
> For those of you who can/will offer a bit of advice, the page in question
is
> at http://www.birthmark.org/survey.htm.  I know they LOOKED at it, because
> it was aligned at one time.  It now appears to have been thrown at the
page.
>
> Thanks, all, for any help you can offer.  I appreciate it.
>
>
> Missy Scott
> MBScott(at)d-assistance.com
>
>
>

HWG hwg-techniques mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA