As a non-techie, even the simplest of things about websites amaze me.

Take website forms for example. I find it amazing that someone can visit my website, hit the submit button and I get sent an email containing all of the information on the form and they get a “thank you” e-mail, letting them know I have received it. And it all happens automatically.

I use forms on a lot of my websites - not so much as contact forms, but for customers to submit images, advertising, etc., online.

The problem is that if you use a form script on one of your websites and it is not secure, then it can be exploited by spammers to send out thousands of e-mails using your server to do so. That can cause you all sorts of problems, not least with the company hosting your website.

I personally use Ultimate FormMail. It’s simple to use, easy to install and does a lot more than simply protect you from spammers. For example, it allows me to create multiple forms on the same website using just the one script. So if I want to include a contact form and an advertising submission form on the same website, I can do it no problem.

That’s important because it means that once my customer has pressed the submit button, he or she can be taken to a unique page on my website confirming that the form was submitted. And a tailored automated e-mail will be fired off too.

Best of all, the man who created Ultimate FormMail, Jack Born, offers help and support that is second to none. I’ve been using it on various websites for maybe three years now and Jack has dug me out of quite a few holes in that time.

It will cost you US$29 for the software and a license to run it on a single website, but if like me you have more than one website, you can take advantage of bulk license offers. I have just purchased 100 licenses and they cost me less than a dollar each. Unbelievable value. It will take me a good few years to use them all, but for me it was an offer just too good to miss.