How to create a Send to a Friend form with two clicks

The "Send to a Friend" feature is one of the oldest and still useful ways to promote our websites. The boom of the social networks has expanded this concept; however the classic "Send to a Friend" feature is still more direct and personal and should be taken in account.

The goal is to create a "Send to a Friend" feature in the minimum time and leave more time for other complex website promotion tasks.

What do we need to create a "Send to a Friend" form with just two clicks?

Here are the requirements:

A website hosted in a server with support for PHP scripts.
Dreamweaver MX or later versions.
The Send to a Friend Dreamweaver Extension.

The Send to a Friend Dreamweaver Extension must be installed into your Dreamweaver, to do this just double click the extension MXP file, the Adobe Extension Manager will be launched automatically and the installation will complete in a few seconds.

With these requirements accomplished, what are the steps to create a "Send to a Friend" form?

Step 1: Open the page where you want to insert the "Send to a Friend" form;

Step 2: Click on the Dreamweaver's menu >> Commands >> Insert Send to a Friend;

Step 3: A configuration dialog will be opened, just leave the default value and click "OK";

That's all. You have the "Send to a Friend" form installed into your webpage; now upload the webpage to your online webserver (including the folder "TEScript" generated into the website) and test it.

send to a friend form.png
Image #1 - Send to a Friend Form in Dreamweaver.

As easy as it gets. Now take a look to other features offered by the Send to a Friend Dreamweaver Extension:

» You can email only the page URL or you can send the complete webpage into the email's body. In most cases "to send the page URL only" is preferred in order to avoid the anti-spam filters.
» The form is posted using Ajax, so the webpage isn't reloaded, improving this way the users' experience and motivating them to send more pages to their friends.
» Two versions of the product are provided, the first one generates a classic form and the second one generates the form with a captcha security image incorporated to prevent spam. You can use the one that you prefer for your website. Generally the version with the captcha image is preferred.
» You can specify the number of email address that can receive the recommendation at the same time. Three seems to be the classic number anyway.

A test script is provided to check if your webserver is compatible with the Send to a Friend Dreamweaver Extension and even if the test isn't positive don't hesitate to contact the support service since in most cases is due to an additional configuration needed to send the emails using PHP from your webserver. A note related to this configuration is mentioned in the product's FAQ.

Looking for a discount offer? This tool has been added recently to the Dreamweaver SEO Booster; take a look to that selection of SEO tools for Dreamweaver.