PHP contact-us script runs without modification. It detects the domain and emails all data of the contact-us form. This PHP script is used to send contact-us form data to the webmaster, It is simple and runs without modification.

Run out-of-box PHP contact-us script, it does not need modification, it will detect the domain and send an email containing the contact message to [email protected] whatever fields are in your form; it will detect them and send the form data with email.

PHP Contact Us Script Links and Downloads

♦ Read PHP Contact Us Script on our blog

♦ Arabic version of this article

♦ PHP Contact Us Script on CodeProject

♦ GitHub Link

What is New in PHP Contact Us Script

• User must enter data in the name field, email, subject, and message before submitting.
• The new version contains more user input filtering. So it keeps the script safe. We sanitize each input key and value using the function htmlspecialchars() and the filter FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING. And It strip any HTML code or invalid characters.

Introduction

Run out-of-box PHP contact-us script, it does not need modification, it will detect the domain and send an email containing the contact message to [email protected] whatever fields are in your form; it will detect them and send the form data by email.

System requirements

• A website with hosting support PHP; Almost all hosts do support it.
• You could use it for any website regardless of what it uses: pure HTML/PHP, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any other system

PHP Version

PHP 5.6, PHP 7.0, PHP 7.1, PHP 7.2, PHP 7.3, PHP 7.4, PHP 8.0, PHP 8.1 or PHP 8.2

Keywords

HTML, PHP, web, web hosting, website, script, code, contact us

Background

Lots of Contact Us scripts are available over the Internet. Other scripts need modification of the PHP file before use while this script will run directly out of the box. This script is very useful to those who do not know PHP and to beginners of PHP.

Using the Code

• Unzip the downloaded zip file
• Create the contact-us folder in the www directory of your website
• Upload the files to the contact-us folder
• That is all
• The contact-us URL is like example.com/contact-us replace example.com with your domain

Modifying contact-us form design

• You could modify the Contact Us page design as you want,
• Add or omit fields as needed
• Use from_email, from_name, subject, message, and captcha as field names
• Put your Ads or make your form free of ads
• You are free to put a link to us or not.

About the contact-us code

From Action

<form action="send.php" method="POST">

Fields Names

Use from_email, from_name, subject, message, and captcha as main fields' names in your form.

Captcha

If you don’t wish to use a captcha, then change the 1st line of the ‘config.php’ code to be as follows:

$captcha = false;

If you wish to use a captcha, then no change is needed and the 1st line of the ‘config.php’ code will be:

$captcha = true;

If you need to modify the form; please note that we use a captcha, include the following in your form:

<img src="captcha_code_file.php?rand=<?php echo rand(); 
?>" id='captchaimg' ><br>
Enter the code above here: <input id="captcha" 
name="captcha" type="text"><br>

Thank you URL

Put your own $thank_you_url in the 2^nd^ line of the code.

What Does This Script Do?

• Check the referrer page and stop the script if it is called directly:

  $REFERER = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
  if(!preg_match("@^http:\/\/(www\.)?$domain\/@",$REFERER)){
                  die("This page can't be call directly");
  }

• Validate user email and user name to prevent injecting the wrong command in the header parameter of the mail() function:

  if(!$from_email) $from_email = "web_page@$domain";
  if (!filter_var($from_email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
                  $Err .= 'Invalid email format<br>';
                  $from_email = "web_page@$domain";
  }

• Validate the subject and encode it if needed to prevent send failure:

  if ($subject && !preg_match('/^[A-Za-z ]+$/',$subject)){
                  $subject = "=?UTF-8?B?".base64_encode($subject)."?=";
  }

• Store the captcha in session and compare it with the variable

• Seek all posted variables

  foreach ($_POST as $key => $value) {
      if ( strpos( strtolower( $key ), 'email' ) !== false ) {
          $value = filter_var( $value, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL );
      } else {
          $value = filter_var( $value, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING );
      }
      $value = htmlspecialchars( $value );
      $key = filter_var( $key, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING );
      $key = htmlspecialchars( $key );
      $value = htmlspecialchars($value);
      $message_html .= "<h2>$key</h2><p>$value</p>";
  }

• Send the message in Html UTF-8 format to be compatible with most languages

• Redirect to thank you URL

  header('Location: '. $thank_you_url);

PHP Mailing Technique

There are lots of mailing techniques in PHP; PEAR Mail, PHP Mailer, and a mail function. However, we just use the mail function as it is common and simple.

PHP Email Validation

PHP FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL Filter

Remove all illegal characters from an email address

$from_email = filter_var($from_email, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

PHP FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL Filter

Check if the variable $email is a valid email address

if (!filter_var($from_email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {                    
    $Err .= 'Invalid email format<br>';               
    $from_email = "web_page@$domain";
}

Validate Email in PHP using a regular expression:

$pattern = '/^[\w.-]+@[\w.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,6}$/';
if(!preg_match($pattern, $from_email)){ 
    $Err .= 'Invalid email format<br>';               
    $from_email = "web_page@$domain";
}