Here in Part 2, we are going to setup the PHP code to receive the data (or info) from that contact form. Open up your html editor and create a new PHP page. Enter the following code bits, in order, within PHP tags.

First thing, define the variables. These will be the names of the fields exactly as they are in your contact form. In our example, we had 1 text input box called cName and 1 text area box called notes.

Let’s also add a few variables that we will use to send our contact form via email. We don’t need these over on the contact form, but we want to define them here so our PHP script can use them later on.
// define our variables, the info that we will be gathering from the form and any variables we want to use later in the script
$EmailFrom = "youremail_here@where.com";
$EmailTo = "youremail_here@where.com";
$Subject = "Contact Form";
$cName = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['cName']));
$notes = Trim(stripslashes($_POST['notes']));

It’s often handy to have the user’s IP address passed along for troubleshooting if needed, so let’s add in a variable for that:
$user_ip = ($_SERVER['X_FORWARDED_FOR']) ? $_SERVER['X_FORWARDED_FOR'] : $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

Ok, now that everything’s defined, let’s setup what the email message should look like when it’s received. Here we are basically just formatting the look of the message body, making it more readable.
// formatting the data for the email message body
$Body .= "Contact Name: ";
$Body .= $cName;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "Notes: ";
$Body .= $notes;
$Body .= "\n";
$Body .= "Users IP: ";
$Body .= $user_ip;
$Body .= "\n";

Here is a quick check to see if a spambot is adding emails to our form. This is just a basic check, so at some point your going to want to make sure your form isn’t being used by a spammer. I will talk more about this in Part 3 – validation.

For now, let’s just do a simple check to see if an extra line or breaking space is being inserted in either the Name text box.
if ( ereg( "[\r\n]", $cName )) ) {

print "<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"0;URL=error.php\">" ;

Ok, so now that we’ve used an “if” statement to check and re-route to an error page if they are a spammer, what do we do if it’s ok to send the form? We use the “else” statement, like this:
// if all good then send our contact form via email and display the results

// send email to the address specified above and include the data
$success = mail($EmailTo, $Subject, $Body, "From:youremail_here@where.com");
And finally, we display the info that the user entered in the form as confirmation that it was sent and so they have a copy for their records. It also let’s us say “Thank you!” for sending the message:
// display results on page so the user has confirmation of their form details
echo "<h3>Thank you! We have received your message!</h3>";
echo "<br />";
echo "<br />";
echo "<p>Hello ".$cName.", </p>";
echo "<br />";
echo "<p>Following are the details of your message:</p>";
echo "<br />";
echo "<p>".$cName."</p>";
echo "<br />";
echo "<p>Your message was: </p>";
echo "<p>".$notes."</p>";
echo "<br />";
}

So, that’s it! Not too bad right? Remember to type the code snippets above inside PHP tags and to save the file as adaction2.php before testing. If you want to change the name of this file, be sure and go back to your form and edit the form tag so it knows where to send this data:
<form name="adReg" method="POST" action="adaction2.php">

To learn PHP in more detail, check out TiZag – many props to TiZag – I learned more from his tutorials than anywhere on the web.

And to get some additional code samples, check out Steve’s site here.

Part 1 will walk you thru setting up the actual form to get it ready to be processed by the PHP script. The form just gets the information to the PHP script.

Part 2 will be the setup of the receiving PHP script, which will process the info from the form and email it.

Part 3 will look at client-side validation with Javascript.

Part 4 we will create a multiple choice input area for the user, and only emailing their selections in the form. We will do this by creating an Array.

Part 5 will create code to also email a confirmation to the user with the info they filled out.

A well designed form will set the stage for easy processing so, with that said, let’s dive into the form construction.

Open your html editor, for most it will be Dreamweaver or similar. I use Quanta+, an open-source software for Linux. Create a new PHP document.

First, let’s add the form elements to our web page, take notice that we are defining the name, method, and action:
<html>
<head></head>
<form name="adReg" method="POST" action="adaction2.php">
</form>
</html>

name = how we will refer to our form
method = POST – how we will send our data over to PHP – this is the transport
action = when a user clicks the Submit button, where the form should send it’s data.

Now, inside the form tags, let’s add just two items, keeping it simple for right now:
<form name="adReg" method="POST" action="adaction2.php">
Contact Name:
<input type="text" name="cName">
Notes:
<textarea name="notes"></textarea>
</form>

Notice again, we have to define the elements in our form so that in our PHP script we know how to refer to them.

All we need to do now is add in the Submit button and a few line breaks for spacing:

<html>
<head></head>
<form name="adReg" method="POST" action="adaction2.php">
Contact Name:
<br />
<input type="text" name="cName">
<br />
Notes:
<br />
<textarea name="notes"></textarea>
<br />
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit">
</form>
</html>

Preview your PHP page and you should see this basic form:

That’s it! Pretty easy right? Now if you click the Submit button above, it won’t actually do anything – yet – visit back for Part 2 where we will construct the actual PHP code that will take the info from the form we created and send it via email.

In part 3, we learned how to move and edit individual nodes on our multi-curved stroke path.

Today we are going to learn how to join two stroke paths into one. Open up Inkscape to our previous lesson file called Goldy.

You should have a finished stroke path like this:

Use the Edit Nodes tool  to add a new stroke path. As you are clicking areas for the node points, I recommend placing them at the end of the curve path and/or in the middle of the curve path, depending on where you want your arcs to turn. This just takes practice and experimenting, so give it a try.

After clicking the placement of your Nodes, press the Enter key on your keyboard to draw the stroke in. You should have something like this:

Shift-Click and then drag the third node to view and adjust the arcs with the Arc Circle tool. Now, you will have to use a combination of adjusting the arcs and moving the nodes along the path to get the desired results.

To refresh, use the circle handlebars on each node to adjust the arc of the curve path.

Use Alt-Click on a node to be able to adjust it on the stroke path. You will know it’s adjustable because the square node will turn Yellow. You can use the arrow keys on the keyboard or the mouse to move it along the path.

After adjusting, you should have something like this. Click the image below for a larger screenshot:

Now, even though they are close together and overlap, these are still two distinct stroke paths. To combine them Shift-Click both paths:

Then click on the top menu Path | Combine (or Ctrl-K) to combine the two paths. Now you have one stroke path with all the nodes still intact and able to be edited:

Save your file and then practice adjusting the arcs and moving the nodes on the combined path to see how combining them affects things. Happy vectoring!

Awhile back we learned how to transfer your own legally purchased mp3′s to your Verizon cellphone and be able to listen to music without having to purchase songs thru Verizon’s very expensive and clunky “service”. You can find that tutorial here.

The only thing I can think of that would cost anything  is the actual text message you will be sending yourself with the ringtone attached, so check your rate on “picture messages” before going too crazy.

Using Audacity, an opensource, free, sound editor available for both Windows and Linux platforms, we can crop our legally purchased mp3′s into “ringtone length” midi files. Let’s walk thru it.

Download and install Audacity. For Linux, I just use Synaptic Package Manager | Search for Audacity | And install from there as any dependancy files will be automatically installed as well, including the very important LAME encoder. If you are installing this on Windows, make sure you install and configure the LAME encoder which will allow you to export as mp3.

Now that Audacity is installed and configured with the LAME encoder, let’s open an mp3 that you want to crop for a ringtone.

Open Audacity and choose File | Open. Path out to an mp3 file and Open it. It may take several seconds for Audacity to open it and then you will see the file in the timeline window (click the image below for a larger screenshot of the Audacity interface):

Listen to the song by clicking the play button and make a note of what section of the song you want to crop as the ringtone.

Using the select tool,  click and drag to highlight the area for the ringtone. You won’t have to be too specific right now, we will tweak the crop in the next step. Just generally select the area you want. With it selected, it should look like this:

Next, click on the menu Edit | Trim, which will leave just the selection, cutting away the rest of the song. Great! Now let’s fine tune our trim and save it to send to your cellphone.

Click on the Zoom tool,  to zoom in on each side of the song. Click and drag with the Select tool, to highlight the area you want to cut away. From the menu choose Edit | Cut to trim away the highlighted area. I like to use Cut, as then I can “undo” if needed. Continue this process until you are happy with your ringtone track.

Now, let’s export it and get it ready to send to the cellphone. From the menu, choose File | Export. This dialog box will pop up. I recommend making the name of the file short for simplicity in viewing the file on your phone. Verify that mp3 is the export format type and where the file will be saved:

Click Save. You will get an additional popup for tagging the file (the meta information), I usually just leave the defaults and click Ok:

Now, we have to rename the file to midi, so that our cellphone will recognize it as a ringtone. Easy enough. Just edit the file extension and change it from mp3 to midi. Make sure you are changing the file extension and not just the file name. For example:

Dragostea_Din_Tei.midi

Now, to get that midi over to your cellphone with a picture/text message.  You can use gmail, Yahoo, etc to send an email to your cellphone with the midi file attached.

Send an email with the attached midi to YOUR_CELLPHONE_NUMBER@vzwpix.com

When you receive the message on your cellphone, open it and download the attachment. Now you can save the download/attachment as a ringtone! That’s it!

Remember, check your rates/plan to see if there are extra costs for you to receive PICTURE messages. That’s the transport we are using to get the ringtone to your phone. Other than that, free ringtones from your own music collection, custom edited by you – how cool is that?!

For exhausting information on using Audacity, check out the Tips wiki here.

I created this tutorial while experimenting on my Samsung U550. In general this process should work for most phones on Verizon. If you need a more exhaustive tutorial, check out Audacity’s version of Making Ringtones.

And if you need info on other cellphones and carriers, check out Howard Forums.

First download the latest deb package of KompoZer to your Desktop.

Next, open up your Terminal as Super User (su). I usually just select Applications | System Tools | Terminal Program – Super User Mode

Enter your su password. Now, lets install the package with gdebi by entering gdebi plus the path to the downloaded file at the command line. Press the Enter key to begin the install.

gdebi /home/your_home_folder_name/Desktop/name_of_file_you_downloaded

See an example of my entry at the command line and the name /location of the downloaded file – click the image to enlarge. Remember, Unix/Linux based system are case sensitive, so Desktop has to be capitalized in your command line.

Now you will see gdebi unpacking the file and checking for dependancies. It will display the author’s description of the package. And it will ask if you want to install KompoZer. Enter Y and press the Enter key.

Now it will do the actual install. When it’s done, and Terminal returns to the command prompt, type logout to exit Terminal. Click image for a larger screenshot:

That’s it! Kompozer is now installed! I found the icon for it under Applications | Internet.

Now, how to use it, right?! From the fine folks on the sourceforge forums for this app, sessileoak posted some links to two guides. Check them out here:

And for everything you ever needed for installing, setting up, and building the perfect debian lenny system can be found in this awesome tutorial by falco on the How To Forge site. Many thanks to falco – all kudos and good karma to you for your great instruction.