I have tried many formmail which includes CGI/Perl formmails and PHP formmails but I find PHP formmail more powerful than Perl formmail because of two facts which I find in them:

CGI formmail is not easy to install on the server it requires more efforts to complete all config
But PHP formmail is easy to use


Furthermore,
PHP formmail has ability to export form data to server
while CGI has not this ability

I am using a formmail which is the product of a known PHP formmail service
[U can search it from GOOGLE to find more about it ]


I want to ask others what they prefer
PHP or CGI formmail

I don't use any form mail scripts. I take advantage of my knowledge of PHP and the mail() function.

Yeah php and the mail function will be pretty much everything you need for it. You can find a bunch of tutorials by googling. I have never used cgi before but its supposed to be good, I dont think that you will find many tutorials for it though, I dont even know if it has a mail function, you might end up having to create it by yourself.

Yeah I also think php form mail is quit easy to use. But the form mail scripts are even easier to use, because its pre-scripted!

Since I have only a little knowledge of cgi, Im not even familiar with it, so yeah

What I do is I simply search for a tutorial on making your own form script. I find that it's a great learning experience, and since Trap17 lets us use a lot of powerful php functions, we can use them to make pretty effective forms. Some of the tutorials even teach how to use AJAX!

Here, I found a pretty cool tutorial: http://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/feedbackphp.shtml

I didn't read it yet, but it looks pretty simple. However, their site still on shtml worries me a bit

I prefer to use php, and to use php/flash/xml/txt (txt databases, no mysql or sql server databases, txt databases can do the job without to much trouble in fact).

I use in my website a web form created with php, flash, xml and a txt database, in fact, now i do not use that txt database, it is very insecure to store data, any one with so me knowledge of http and tcp/ip would view the file with all the records, but that is another story, continuing, i prefer those languages, they work perfectly each and together, and the thing is that flash technology can create web forms in flash that can attract visitors a lot more then the ones made with html (form tag and its atributes, of course, which is part of the html language).

If yo uwant, php can do the job with an html form, it is so easy ,quickly and so simple that anyone can do it or anyone can copy a simple code from the net and use it on his/her own web form projects, that is that easy if you ask me, though you should create your own code and be original, at least to be original in some way, you will feel better inside.

My advice is to use those languages together, if not, just because it is too much, use th php laguage with a html form with a litle of css to spice up the forms, and a litle bit of javascript too to work with the validation of the form, specially in the e-mail field.

Css can spice the form fileds by adding cool features (colors and animations too, not only flash can animate, css can too).