Dreamhost CGI contact form, formatting in sidebar?

  • Resolved Alison

    (@anonymical7)


    12 years, 7 months ago

    Hey all,

    So I am using the widget builder plug-in to use the Dreamhost CGI contact form to get a mailing list situation working, But when added the whole first part of the code creates a big blank space on the page…. it says hidden but apparently while hidden, there is still alot of space on the page. The only way to use it is to use the CGI script below… Is there a way I can truly hide the first part of the form so theres not a bunch of space on the page or widget. It happens on both.

    <form method="post" action="https://blahblah.com>
<input type="hidden" name="list" value="friends@https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="domain" value="https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="url" value="https://https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="unsuburl" value="https://https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="alreadyonurl" value="https://https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="notonurl" value="https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="invalidurl" value="https://https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="emailconfirmurl" value="https://https://blahblah.com" />
<input type="hidden" name="emailit" value="1" />
Name: <input name="name" />
E-mail: <input name="email" /><br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Join blah blah Friends Email List" />
<input type="submit" name="unsub" value="Unsubscribe" />
</form>
Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)

  • Hi, honestly, I’m not really sure I understand what the problem is.

    It sounds like you’re saying that the form is hiding. It might be that WordPress is hiding it. Though it’s more likely that you have some CSS that is hiding it.

    Also, FYI, there is no CGI in what you posted here. This is all HTML form code. The CGI part is likely what this is sending data to.

    Lastly, there are a lot of great ways to do contact forms that might be better than the DH CGI form. I personally am partial to Google forms and Mailchimp. There are also myriad WordPress form plugins including Contact Form 7 and the all mighty Gravity Forms

    p.s. it might help if you linked to a live working example of where your form is not working since the part that’s broken is probably not in the code you pasted.

    Moderator Kira Schroder

    (@kirasong)

    4.5 Release Lead

    It sounds like you’re probably looking at a CSS/HTML issue — perhaps in the way that your theme handles forms. It’s pretty normal for starting a form tag to add a bit of space, if it’s not corrected for. Given the actual site to take a look at, we can probably divine what’s up.

    That said, what Modern Tribe said is spot on — while the DH form CGI will do the trick, you might want to look into Jetpack’s built in forms (free), Contact Form 7 (free), or Gravity Forms (paid), since it’ll probably give you and your users a bit better experience, and will certainly be simpler to customize.

    Thread Starter Alison

    (@anonymical7)

    Oh its working just fine, it just visually is sitting further down the page.
    Dreamhost insists we use the cgi script, but if you could see a better way that would be great… They have these anti-spam things I guess that insist on it. We would like to avoid mail chimp… and have the subscribe form on our domain….

    1) So the first part of the form is hidden…but still takes up space on the page. So its good that its hidden, it just is resulting in space…. Thanks Modern tribe for creating this Widget Builder!

    Screen shot here, you can see the space once the first part of the form is hidden…

    https://usartberlin.org/Screen.png

    Dreamhost insists on using their add_list.cgi…

    <form method="post" action="https://scripts.dreamhost.com/add_list.cgi">

    Hi there, I’m Brian, and I’m a support manager at DreamHost =) I don’t actually see the real world example of where this script is, so I can’t look at it server side. That’s the best way to test things. If you’d like help, please submit a support ticket, and I can personally look into it. Just make the subject “ATTN Brian H”

    That said, I should address a few things:

    “Dreamhost insists on using their add_list.cgi…”

    If you want to use our mailing list, you have to post the form results to our cgi script, yes. That’s the only way our mailing list works.

    Just so we’re on the same page, here’s exactly what’s going on with the form, and submitting: when you hit submit, special values are being passed to that cgi script. Those values are what’s “hidden” in the code you pasted. Those values don’t actually do _anything_ when rendering the html, however. They don’t add space, or change html in any way, at all, so, that space is coming from something else.

    To show this, try removing the extra “hidden” values, and see if the space is still there. Most likely, it will be.

    Unfortunately, I can’t help anymore, as I don’t have the location of the form in front of me. Please submit a support request with the location of the problem form, and we’ll get you sorted out right away! =)

    Hope to hear from you soon!

    Thread Starter Alison

    (@anonymical7)

    Hi Guys, this is how I solved the problem… I simply used the plug in… WP-DreamLists this allowed me to post the list on the page without the CGI Form…. This solved the problem.

    You can see the new form in the far left side bar of our site here: https://usartberlin.org/

    In the end, the space might have come from some conflict with the Theme perhaps… but I could not find out how or why… b/c yes, when i put the script in other fields it appeared fine…. a real mystery…

    Thanks! A

Viewing 6 replies - 1 through 6 (of 6 total)
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