How can I get a PDF form to email to me when it is hosted online?

Question

Ok, I'm not a coding expert, but I understand CSS and html alright.
I am trying to create a PDF form for my website: www.pantherapressdesign.com.
I have already created the forms (they are under the purchase section of the site) and when they are saved to the harddrive they work just fine. HOWEVER, when you fill them out and they open in the browser they will not submit to me (aka. I don't get them by email, even though the submit button correctly re-directs you to the thanks page).
In the fuctions of the submit button I have it set to mailto:[email protected]
When the form is saved on the hard drive (I open it from the desktop) and click submit it brings up a dialog box and asks me how I want to send it. I then choose desktop mail service, it opens it in an email and sends it.
I want customers to be able to click the form from the website - fill it out right there in the browser - and then be able to submit it to me that way.
I am assuming I must route this through the php or something, but am not sure how to do that. I have the php working for the contact from on the website, but I don't know php so I used pre-written code to do that. Is there some simple code I can drop into my php that will handle these forms? Help, please! Thanks

Answer 1

I looked at the Stationary form, and there are a number of things you need to change. It is currently set up to submit as "HTML", as opposed to FDF, XFDF, or the entire PDF. This is fine if you're submitting the form to a web server, which can read the field data, place it in an email, and send it off. This is actually much preferred to relying on the user's machine being set up properly to send an email. Many are not and not receiving order that someone thought was submitted will be bad for your business. Consider removing the existing forms today and you can update when they are working.
Your web hosting service likely has a PHP script that is designed to work with HTML forms and send an email with the form data included. This can work with a PDF form if the form is correctly set up. To do that, you will need to know how the script works and what it is expecting in the way of form data when it processes a submission. The PHP script should also be modified to send an appropriate response back to the user, which can be a simple redirect. The way you have it now with a link to the redirect page is wrong. It goes there whether the form is complete or not and whether the email actually got sent. This can be avoided by having the web server take care of this.
If you don't have the expertise to modify the form to suit the PHP script and PHP script to suit the workflow, you'll need to find someone who does.