My PHP form won't send e-mail to me and redirects to a blank page

Question

I have researched this question, but I don't think I will find an answer, because I'm guessing it is something wrong with my code personally. I have tried every combination of trying to get my PHP contact form to Submit & send me an e-mail but it does nothing, even when it has been uploaded to the server. It simply displays a blank page once I click submit, and I get no e-mail at all to the e-mail address I entered into the code. I don't know what I'm missing as I can't find an answer to my problem anywhere.

One thing I did notice was that I have some different fields in my HTML than specified in the PHP to be required fields. However, I don't know that this makes a difference as I'm not getting any error messages or anything else for these fields. Please let me know if you need any additional details. I appreciate your help in advance.

HTML

<form id="form_884913" method="post" action="send_form_email.php" class="appnitro">

This is where ALL of my fields are, so I omitted it since quite a large script. Please let me know if you need any of this to help me

Rest of HTML

<input type="hidden" name="form_id" value="884913" />               
<input id="saveForm" class="button_text" type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
<input type="reset" value="Reset">

    </form> 

PHP

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

// EDIT THE 2 LINES BELOW AS REQUIRED
$email_to = "myemailaddresswastyped@blank.com";
$email_subject = "Contact";


function died($error) {
    // your error code can go here
    echo "We are very sorry, but there were error(s) found with the form you submitted. ";
    echo "These errors appear below.<br /><br />";
    echo $error."<br /><br />";
    echo "Please go back and fix these errors.<br /><br />";
    die();
}

// validation expected data exists
if(!isset($_POST['first_name']) ||
    !isset($_POST['last_name']) ||
    !isset($_POST['email']) ||
    !isset($_POST['telephone']) ||
    !isset($_POST['comments'])) {
    died('We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');      
}

$first_name = $_POST['first_name']; // required
$last_name = $_POST['last_name']; // required
$email_from = $_POST['email']; // required
$telephone = $_POST['telephone']; // not required
$comments = $_POST['comments']; // 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 />';
}
$string_exp = "/^[A-Za-z .'-]+$/";
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$first_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The First Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(!preg_match($string_exp,$last_name)) {
$error_message .= 'The Last Name you entered does not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
if(strlen($comments) < 2) {
$error_message .= 'The Comments you entered do not appear to be valid.<br />';
}
 if(strlen($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);
}

$email_message .= "First Name: ".clean_string($first_name)."\n";
$email_message .= "Last Name: ".clean_string($last_name)."\n";
$email_message .= "Email: ".clean_string($email_from)."\n";
$email_message .= "Telephone: ".clean_string($telephone)."\n";
$email_message .= "Comments: ".clean_string($comments)."\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 -->

Thank you for contacting me! I will be in touch with you very soon.

<?php
 }
 ?>

Answer 1

As mentioned by GaijinJim, if it isn't already a field you've posted, since you omitted some of the fields, make sure to add a field in HTML:

<input type="hidden" name="email" value="" /> 

Might also add for testing, but not for production, to the last line in PHP:

<?php
    } else {
        echo "$_POST['email'] is not set.";
    }
?>

Answer 2

If you want to use $_POST (Same with $_GET method) with a form in HTML&PHP you must name your field like so:

<input type="text" name="MyfieldName" value="1">

Only then you can call your $_POST['MyfieldName']

Now if you would echo $_POST['MyfieldName']; it would return 1

Answer 3

In your PHP-file you check whether all of the following input fields exist in your form,

// validation expected data exists
if(!isset($_POST['first_name']) ||
    !isset($_POST['last_name']) ||
    !isset($_POST['email']) ||
    !isset($_POST['telephone']) ||
    !isset($_POST['comments'])) {
    died('We are sorry, but there appears to be a problem with the form you submitted.');      
}

Thus in order for your form to validate all of those fields must exist, you must have,

<input type="text" name="first_name" />
<input type="text" name="last_name" /> 
<input type="text" name="email" /> 
<input type="text" name="telephone" /> 
<input type="text" name="comments" />

If you do not want some of those fields, for example email, simply remove `!isset($_POST['email']) from your PHP's if-statement.

---

As per your comment I get the impression that the input field named email does not exists, which is the reason why you get a blank page. If you were to add that input field on your HTML-page you would see some sort of error message instead of a blank page :)