Unfortunately, FrontPage is a very strange program, and the programmers have it set up to add all manners of extra information. Also, the <form> tag that it creates is simply not suitable for GeoCities forms.
I STRONGLY recommend that you do NOT use FrontPage to create your form; it would be much quicker and less troublesome in the end to simply cut and paste the tags from this tutorial into a SIMPLE word processor program (NoteBook or SimpleText - the simpler the better). Trying to patch the code produced by FrontPage is very confusing and can lead to mistakes.
FrontPage has also messed up a few people's NEXT-URL tag by inserting a "hidden character" in that tag, causing the form to misbehave. The tags ends up looking perfect, but the hidden item still interferes, so it's really hard to figure out what is wrong.
Bottom line: if you're trying to repair a form already created with FrontPage, don't; it's better to nuke it and start fresh, creating the page by hand.
The Comments page you see was not created automatically. Each response was received as an e-mail, then cut and pasted into the Comments source code. E-mail addresses were then removed, formatting and font styles were added, and spelling checked and corrected where applicable. The page was then uploaded into the GeoCities Directory.
The Form's script, the part of the form that's in the GeoCities computer's cgi-bin, is a very simple, standard one. All it will do is e-mail you the results as they are sent in by your visitors. It will not insert those results into another page for you. That must all be done by hand.
There is, however, a new GeoCities GUESTBOOK which will allow you to set up to 9 one-line text boxes and one textarea comment box (no buttons or lists, sorry!). You can customize these to ask for almost anything (no "require" available, sorry!) and when they send off the form, these items are all placed into a "Read the Guestbook" page (no "NEXT-URL" page, sorry!). To get your GeoGuestbook, go HERE. You can view OUR guestbook (and sign it, too) from HERE.
The <form> tag lists the action as "/cgi-bin/homestead/mail.pl?membername" which works fine when the form is in your GeoCities directory. But to make it work from your hard drive while you're still building the page "offline", you'll need a full URL there: "/cgi-bin/homestead/mail.pl?membername". The server then knows WHERE the cgi-bin is located and won't look for it on your hard drive. If you wish, you may remove the additional address when you've uploaded the form, although it will work fine as is.
This usually means that you're looking for the responses to show up in an account other than the one you listed as your home e-mail address in your GeoCities Member Profile.
The form will send the responses ONLY to the "e-mail address of record" in the profile, the one where you received your account password originally. Even if you've set up a "you@GeoCities.com" e-mail account, or perhaps asked for a Forwarding of your GeoCities e-mails to a third address, the form still only sends to your original address.
Another possibility is that the membername you've used in the <form> tag is typed incorrectly, but matches someone else's perfectly (ie: yours is bobsmithers, but the results are going to bobsmither. Mr. Smither is presently scartching his head wondering why he's suddenly getting lots of strange e-mails about hedgehogs...).
This question nearly always comes without the benefit of an URL to check out. If you're going to ask for help you MUST include the URL where the form can be found (directed right to your form, not merely to the front page with instructions to "then click this then click that...") AND a thorough description of the problem you're experiencing. You cannot have TOO MANY DETAILS!
Short answer: NO!
Slightly less short answer: I won't do it. Unh-unh. Nope. Two reasons:
This one is almost ALWAYS because the server is presently offline or too busy. You can test this by typing
http://www.geocities.com/cgi-bin/homestead/mail.pl?yourmembername
in your browser's address or location bar (just add your OWN GeoCities membername).
Note: Once you've changed the membername and hit return, you might want to bookmark this Generic Form URL to yourself, as it comes in handy for checking the form page out whenever you get these error messages.
If the same error message appears when you submit that generic form, then the problem is not with your new form. Simply wait a while (it's been known to be repaired in a few minutes to a few hours, so be patient!) and try it again later. It will more than likely work fine.
Check your NEXT-URL tag: you will find that you have a shortened URL, such as "sent.html", or a mistyped one.
This is wrong; you MUST have a full URL in the NEXT-URL tag: "http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/4555/sent.html".
This mostly happens when someone has used the templates found in GeoCities' Mail Script Form Examples to create their original form. The info they give in regards to the NEXT-URL tag is incorrect.
If you've started with that form as a template, I strongly recommend you start a new form from scratch using the tags as listed in this Tutorial. Again there is a lot of superfluous info in that form's source code, it's not very easy to follow and could cause errors. Start a new, fresh version.
First, test the form using your Generic Form URL (mentioned 2 items above) and see if you're not getting the same message. If you get the Error message there as well, go to GeoCities' Announcement page at
http://www.geocities.com/homestead/announce.html
(You should bookmark this one; it's very useful to check whenever you have ANY problems getting around in GeoCities). This will probably say something like "We're working on the system, and some of the utilities are presently offline; we'll hopefully have them back up by such-and-such a time."
Unfortunately, the only thing to do in this case is wait it out. :-(
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