Help me with a simple newsletter subscription form?

Question

The newsletter subscription form I am working on can be found in the footer at this link.

Currently, when the form is submitted, the error/success message displays on a new page.

Instead I would like for the error/success message to display directly below the form in the footer.

IE. If a user enters the email address [email protected], the text "Success" should display below the input field instead of on a new page.

Help would be greatly appreciated!

Here's what I've got now:

In the Header

<script>
function submitEmail() {

    var email = $('#emailText').val();

    jQuery.post('/common/php/send_news.php', {
        email: email
    },function(data){
        $('#submissionResponse').html(data);
    },html);

}
</script>

FORM

<form method="post">
        <fieldset>
        <h3></h3>
        <input type="text" name="email" maxlength="80" class="input" value="enter your email address..." onfocus="this.className=('input_active')" onblur="this.className=('input')" onclick="this.value='';" />
        <input type="button" name="submit"  value="" class="subscribe_btn" onmouseover="this.className=('subscribe_btn_over')" onmouseout="this.className=('subscribe_btn')" onclick="submitEmail();" />
        <small>*we will not share your email address</small><span class="clear"></span>
        </fieldset>
      </form>
      <div id="submissionResponse"></div>

send_news.php

<?php
if(isset($_POST['email'])) {

    // EDIT THE 2 LINES BELOW AS REQUIRED
    $email_to = "[email protected]";
    $email_subject = "Newsletter Subscription";


    function died($error) {
        // your error code can go here
        echo "There was an error with your submission";
        echo $error."<br /><br />";
        die();
    }

    // validation expected data exists
    if(
        !isset($_POST['email'])) {
        died('There was an error with your submission');       
    }

    $email_from = $_POST['email']; // required


    $error_message = "";
    $email_exp = '/^[A-Za-z0-9._%-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,4}$/';
  if(!preg_match($email_exp,$email_from)) {
    $error_message .= 'The Email Address you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
  }

  if(strlen($error_message) > 0) {
    died($error_message);
  }
    $email_message = "Form details below.\n\n";

    function clean_string($string) {
      $bad = array("content-type","bcc:","to:","cc:","href");
      return str_replace($bad,"",$string);
    }

    $email_message .= "Email: ".clean_string($email_from)."\n";


// create email headers
$headers = 'From: '.$email_from."\r\n".
'Reply-To: '.$email_from."\r\n" .
'X-Mailer: PHP/' . phpversion();
@mail($email_to, $email_subject, $email_message, $headers);  
?>

<!-- include your own success html here -->

Thanks for signup up for the Newsletter!

<?php
}
?>

Answer 1

If you wish to do this, you need to use something like an AJAX POST submission, instead of a normal form POST submission. Then you can put the response text anywhere you wish to indicate an error or success condition.