newuser_UserDefinedForm.inc

What does this file do?

Customers of our previous products frequently ask, "How can I gather more information from new users when they register on the site?"

For instance, the newuser.asp page provides a form in which the registrant must provide their name, email address, mailing address, phone numbers, etc. However, many business would like to harvest more information from people who sign up on their web site. For example:

How did you learn of our service?
Which search engine referred you to our web site?
Would you like to be notified of future promotions?
What is your occupation?

There are many questions that may be pertinent to your business model or marketplace that are not currently included in the standard registration form in 20/20 DataShed. Perhaps a survey, or job application, or resume should be included on your web site?

The newuser_UserDefinedForm.inc provides you the ability to add your own form elements to the registration form. The information may then be sent to the administrator's email address -- what is done with the information after that is entirely up to your imagination.

Permissions and Security

Server

This file may inherit the permissions from its parent folder; but at the very least it requires that the IUSR_<localmachinename> (or equivalent) user account have NTFS permissions to read the file.

For comprehensive NTFS file/folder permission settings, please see File/Folder Security (NTFS Permissions).

Internal

This file does not require internal security measures.

Security Warning: This file, as it has a *.inc file extension and is written in plain text, should not contain sensitive information. If you write ASP or VBScript code in this file and perhaps connect to a database or contain connection strings, passwords, or other sensitive information, you should be aware that visitors of your web site may be able to view the entire contents of this file in their web browser. For this reason, we encourage you to not add any sensitive information or confidential information to this file -- we recommend that this file simply contain form elements and/or relevant text.

How to Maintain

This file does not require maintenance. However, if you have altered the file from its original state then you may want to keep a local or backup copy.

Included In (Files)

newuser.asp

This file is included in newuser.asp (via SSI (Server-Side Includes)) immediately before the "Submit" button in the registration form. As such, any form elements or content written in this file will appear at the end of the current input boxes and before the submit button.

Any user input gathered from form elements that you add to the page can then be included in an email message to the administrator's email address. This behaviour is controlled in the email_newuserregisteredadminnotification_template.html file found in the "templates" folder.

Inherits (Files)

newuser.asp (and its ancestors)

Other Features

For advanced users/customers who have experience with ASP and/or VBScript, it's relevant to point out that this file can contain VBScript and ASP code. Any ASP or VBScript script blocks within this file will be processed normally.

How to Customize

Note: You should not use <form></form> tags in the HTML code in this file. This file is included in the newuser.asp file after the current form elements and before the "submit" button; thus, the contents are already contained within a <form>.

There are two possible uses for this file:

Add text or information to the newuser.asp registration page.
Add form elements (input boxes, drop-down boxes, radio buttons, etc.) to the newuser.asp registration form.

To add a simple form element to this file:

Access your web site with an FTP application such as CuteFTP, FTP Explorer, or Windows "My Network Places".
Download "newuser_UserDefinedForm.inc" from the parent folder of this application to your local computer.
Open "newuser_UserDefinedForm.inc" in a text editor such as Notepad. You may also use a WYSIWYG editor like Frontpage or Dreamweaver for this purpose; however remember to double-check the raw HTML source to ensure that the <form></form> tags and any other extraneous tags are removed (i.e. this file should not be a fully formed HTML document and therefore should not contain: <html>, <head>, <title>, <body> tags.)
Create form elements as necessary. See a brief example below:

Do you own a house? <input type="checkbox" name="Owns a House"><br /> Is it "little"? <input type="radio" name="A Little House" value="Yes"> Yes <input type="radio" name="A Little House" value="No"> No<br /> Is it on the prairie? <input type="text" name="On the Prairie">
The output of this HTML code is:

Do you own a house?
Is it "little"? Yes No
Is it on the prairie?
Remember, these elements will appear on the newuser.asp page will appear to be part of the registration form. So while the example above is functional it doesn't look pretty -- we would recommend that you carefully organize your form elements into a nicely formatted table or <div>.
Save the file.
Upload the file to your web site using the FTP application and overwrite the existing "newuser_UserDefinedForm.inc" file.
Visit the newuser.asp page on your web site to view the result of your changes.

The next step is to receive the user's input. This is discussed further in email_newuserregisteredadminnotification_template.html.

Warning

If you must access this file using another product or software, do so at your own risk; such activity is not supported by our license agreement and may void 20/20 Application's technical support obligations.

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