pontifex

I've inherited a website (www.bonniebakerlaw.com) and have found that the previous web developer had left the contact form in quite a shambles. As you can see it attempts to use a Captcha to validate users, but does not in fact work! I can leave the entire form blank (including the captcha) and still get to the "Thank You" page indicating the form was correctly submitted (This does not, in fact, actually generate an email correctly)! So before I delve into "Head First PHP & MySQL" to debug and correct the error, I was wondering if some kind person(s) would be good enough to point me to the relevant sections / documentation highlighting the fundamentals of building this type of form correctly coupled with the use of a Captcha as noted. Some code has been REDACTED to protect the innocent. I won't post the HTML of the form as it's available from the web site and is a fairly simple HTML construct. Form Code: <?php require_once('recaptchalib.php'); // Get a key from https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create $publickey = "REDACTED PUBLIC KEY"; $privatekey = "REDACTED PRIVATE KEY"; # the response from reCAPTCHA $resp = null; # the error code from reCAPTCHA, if any $error = null; # was there a reCAPTCHA response? if ($_POST["recaptcha_response_field"]) { $resp = recaptcha_check_answer ($privatekey, $_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"], $_POST["recaptcha_challenge_field"], $_POST["recaptcha_response_field"]); if ($resp->is_valid) { echo "You got it!"; } else { # set the error code so that we can display it $error = $resp->error; } } echo recaptcha_get_html($publickey, $error); ?> "Thank You" page Code: <?php $visitor = $_REQUEST['visitor'] ; $visitormail = $_REQUEST['visitormail'] ; $State = $_REQUEST['State:'] ; $Address = $_REQUEST['StreetAddress'] ; $City = $_REQUEST['City:'] ; $Zip = $_REQUEST['Zip:'] ; $Phone = $_REQUEST['Phone:'] ; $Fax = $_REQUEST['Fax:'] ; $Emailed = $_REQUEST['Emailed'] ; $Phoned = $_REQUEST['Phoned'] ; $Faxed = $_REQUEST['Faxed'] ; $Postaled = $_REQUEST['Postaled'] ; $Description = $_REQUEST['IssueDescription'] ; if ($Emailed == "y") { $req1 = " Email \n" ; } if ($Phoned == "y") { $req2 = " Phone \n"; } if ($Faxed == "y") { $req3 = " Fax \n"; } if ($Postaled == "y") { $req4 = " Postal Mail \n"; } $req = $req1 . $req2 . $req3 . $req4 ; $message = "name: $visitor email: $visitormail Address: $Address City: $City State: $State Zip: $Zip Phone: $Phone Fax: $Fax Requested contact by: $req Description: $Description " ; mail("redacted@somedomain.com", "redacted@somedomain.com: contact page", "$message", "From: $visitormail" ) ; ?>

I've inherited the web site of the law firm (as per the subject). I'm more of a system administration guy, less web design. Still learning how best to bring the web site "up to code". If you have any helpful suggestions, I'd appreciate it: www.bonniebakerlaw.com Also if there are any PHP "best practices" / design patterns I should be aware of as I start my PHP education I'd appreciate links to blogs / definitions / documentation as applicable.