Issue sending the information to my email from a contact us form

Question

I have a contact us form using a HTML file and a PHP file (sendeamil.php) that is compose by (header.html, footer.html and contentsendemail.php where is my code to send the information to my email.

I have my HTML file with the form:

<form name="htmlform" method="post" action="sendemail.php">
<table width="450px">
</tr>
<tr>
 <td valign="top">
  <label for="first_name">First Name *</label>
 </td>
 <td valign="top">
  <input  type="text" name="first_name" maxlength="50" size="30">
 </td>
</tr>

<tr>
 <td valign="top"">
  <label for="last_name">Last Name *</label>
 </td>
 <td valign="top">
  <input  type="text" name="last_name" maxlength="50" size="30">
 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td valign="top">
  <label for="email">Email Address *</label>
 </td>
 <td valign="top">
  <input  type="text" name="email" maxlength="80" size="30">
 </td>

</tr>
<tr>
 <td valign="top">
  <label for="telephone">Telephone Number</label>
 </td>
 <td valign="top">
  <input  type="text" name="telephone" maxlength="30" size="30">
 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
 <td valign="top">
  <label for="comments">Comments *</label>
 </td>
 <td valign="top">
  <textarea  name="comments" maxlength="1000" cols="25" rows="6">     </textarea>
 </td>

</tr>
<tr>
 <td colspan="2" style="text-align:center">
<input type="submit" value="Submit">   ( <a href="http://www.freecontactform.com/html_form.php">HTML Form</a> )
 </td>
</tr>
</table>
</form>

Then I have my sendemail.php file which is compose by the Header, content and Footer:

<?php  
include("templates/header.html");  
$action = 'contentsendemail';
$disallowed_paths = array('header', 'footer');
if (!empty($_GET['action'])) {
$tmp_action = basename($_GET['action']);
if (!in_array($tmp_action, $disallowed_paths) && file_exists("templates/{$tmp_action}.php"))
    $action = $tmp_action;
}
include("templates/$action.php");
include("templates/footer.html"); 
?>

And the my contentsendemail.php file:

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

// CHANGE THE TWO LINES BELOW
$email_to = "myemail@gmail.com";

$email_subject = "Subject Here";


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";


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

Thank you for contacting us. 

<?php
}
die();
?>

I have 2 questions or issues:

1. I'm not getting any email. Is anything I need to do in the server or somewhere to have the emails sent? why I'm not getting the emails?

2. when I click submit in the contactus.php site and I get the message "Thank you for contacting us." in the sendemail.php I get both the header.html and contentsendemail.php included but not the footer.html.

Answer 1

I have two answers to your two issues which both reside in contentsendemail.php

1. @mail() does not exist in core PHP (and I'm not even sure its a valid function name), you want mail().
2. die(); kills the execution of the script at that point, and nothing else is parsed/returned after that line which is executed before the inclusion of the footer.