# CGI/PERL question: making a form to send an e-mail

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cgi-perl-question-making-a-form-to-send-an-e-mail/270945>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 24, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cgi-perl-question-making-a-form-to-send-an-e-mail/270945 "2004-10-24T22:35:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![toadspittle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c0e974/32.png) [@toadspittle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toadspittle)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cgi-perl-question-making-a-form-to-send-an-e-mail/270945/1 "2004-10-24T22:35:16Z")

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A friend and client belongs to a church that wants to put a page like this:

[http://www.c3church.org/page/invite](http://www.c3church.org/page/invite)

on their own church’s web site. It would be a nice favor to a good client if I could tell them how to do it.

I’m more of an ASP person, so I’ve never really delved into CGI/PERL. But my friend’s church’s site is definitely CGI-based (.shtml pages). How do I do this (make a form that lets a church member put in her own name/e-mail and a friend’s name/email and send a form-letter invitation to said friend’s e-mail)?

I assume that there’s a billion free scripts like this online, somewhere … but all I can find are the more typical form/e-mail scripts, where someone types info. into fields and then sends that info. in an e-mail to YOUR address–not to a variable third party’s address.

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**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\
**Post date:** [October 24, 2004, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cgi-perl-question-making-a-form-to-send-an-e-mail/270945/2 "2004-10-24T23:12:20Z")

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I’ve got a PERL script I’ve used for similar purposes that I could modify for you. Email me, and I’ll dig it up for you.

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**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cgi-perl-question-making-a-form-to-send-an-e-mail/270945/3 "2004-10-25T03:25:29Z")

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You might also want to ask the client if their Web host has some sort of control panel for users, or a nice “what you can do with your account” FAQ for users.

I’m also an “ASP Guy” (but a girl…) and had to do a CGI form for someone one time. I got their control panel URL, logged in and after a few minutes of clicking around I found that there were some nice pre-installed CGI scripts for users and it gave instructions on how to use each one and the settings you need to use.

Then I charged them a lot of $$ to do it, just because this “webmaster” was too stupid to figure it out herself. heh. n00bs 😉

But yeah, if it’s a nice Unix webhost, I bet they have some nice pre-installed scripts to use.

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**Author:** ![ccwaterback](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/df705f/32.png) [@ccwaterback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ccwaterback)\
**Post date:** [October 25, 2004, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cgi-perl-question-making-a-form-to-send-an-e-mail/270945/4 "2004-10-25T03:56:39Z")

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I think this is pretty close to what you need:

[http://javascript.internet.com/page-details/email-this-page.html](http://javascript.internet.com/page-details/email-this-page.html)