Tell a Friend

Hi. I am wondering how I would go about setting up a form that would send an email that would enable a person to Invite a friend to an event?

Would I be able to set up a form that had fields that asked for:

The Person Filling out the forms Name and Email

Comments

A friends name and email


And then create a html email result that sent an invite only to the friend that was invited? I am assuming I would use the special tab for this but there was talk about also needing an email in the General tab. Would the special tab email override the general tab?

I would want the from address to come from the person filling out the form but didn't know if this would cause a problem?

Hi Alex,

You can set up the form just like that.

You can use the standard ChronoForms email and send it to the friend using the special tab (there is/was a bug in the ChronoForms admin validation that also requires an email in the General tab but you can put any dummy email address there).

You can set the From Address to use the submitter's address, again using the Special Fields tab. You probably can't set the Reply To address to be the submitter's (you can try it using some php but many ISPs will block the email if you do).

Bob

Thanks. How would I go about using php to do that?

I would like the reply to address to be the friends email rather than my clients main site email (The information that was required in the general tab) since it is the friend sending out the invitation from my clients site. The friends address does appear in the from field but it seems odd that the reply to would be something different.

Also the general tab requires you to put something in the to field which also appears in the email that the friend receives. I do not want that email to appear in the to field .... just the friends email that is receiving the email.

If I set the setting in the general tab to not email the results then the special fields no longer work so I have to fill out all the info in general tab. I really want to use field names in those places. Anyway ... let me know if there is some workaround to achieve what I would like to do.

Thanks --- Alex

Hi Alex,

Just to be clear. Whilst you might like the email to be from the friend, as far as the internet is concerned it's from your clients website. Hence the correct ReplyTo address is one at the website domain.

Please check that emails arrive if you have some random email address in the ReplyTo email field. Very often they are treated as 'relayed' messages and bounced, marked as spam or dumped.

We recommend that you do not make this change. If you do then I think tha the code you need is:

<?php
$paramsvalues->replyto_email = $_POST['field_name_1'];
$paramsvalues->replyto_name = $_POST['field_name_2'];
?>

in the OnSubmit before email box.

Note the name and a valid email most be there (and not blank) or the email will not be sent.

Bob

PS The need to put something in the To field as well as special tabs is a piece of overzealous validation by Max, hopefully he will free it up in a future release.

Thanks. So basically if I make this change it could cause the emails to get marked as spam and not delivered? If that is the case I think I can live with the reply to being my clients address if they can.

Thanks for the help and the clarification.

Hi Alex,

Yes *could* is the key word here. By all means run some tests and see if your site is OK - some are, many aren't. I don't recommend it because it's caused users problems in the past and isn't easy to diagnose. The messages appear not to be delivered and any warnings are often sent off to the "friend's" email address.

Bob