I am moving my personal web site from netlify to a VPS. It runs via Caddy as just a plain, static web site generated from Hugo. Netlify offered a free contact form, but now I need to provide my own solution, somehow.

I’d like to self-host that too, if possible, on the VPS but then I need to handle spam blocking, form validation, possibly capcha, and sending the outbound email myself - and I don’t have experience doing any of that. An AI chatbot suggested a python script using flask but I would still need to do a bunch to make that work, I think.

There are a number of form handling cloud services online (such as staticforms dot xyz) but then the form submissions are going through their servers. My visitors probably wouldn’t care, but I would still prefer to self-host something, if it’s not too hard to setup.

What do you all recommend? Anyone find a clever solution to this already?

I already have a “comments” feature wired into the site - I could just stick with that but some people seem to still prefer to contact me directly, instead of using that.

EDIT: This is all done - thanks for all the great ideas, you all rock!

  • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    I’m a flask developer but even so I would use PHP for this. There are a million php-based contact form scripts on the web and configuring caddy to use PHP will be easier than python/flask.

    As for the sending email part - don’t run a smtp server locally, too much hassle. Smtp2go has a free tier which will be fine.

  • madnificent@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    6 hours ago

    You could provide a (separate) email address for that and hope spam detection is good enough. You can use <a href="mailto:me@example.com?subject=Direct mail message from PAGE">mail me</a> to have them open their mail client. It is wise to provide the address visually too and you might ask them to include something in the subject so you can filter out mailing list spam easily.

  • bobslaede@feddit.dkEnglish
    3·
    7 hours ago

    I have used opnform with success. Have tried a bunch others, but this one worked well for me. It sounds like your use case is almost the same as mine.

  • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    7 hours ago

    the form itself is easy, it’s the bot detection and spam prevention that’s hard. on my own sites, i’ve given-in and use the highest-level recaptcha, a hidden form field triggered by bots but not humans, and a server-side script for the mailing that also has some spam detection routines. they still get through, but far less often than a naked form would.

    if you’re satisfied with your existing comments function, can you simply enable comments on your ‘contact’ page and hide them from public view?

    • perishthethought@piefed.socialOPEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      if you’re satisfied with your existing comments function, can you simply enable comments on your ‘contact’ page and hide them from public view?

      I was also struggling with DNS issues all day so this is what I am putting in place for now. Yah, good enough is good enough. Thanks for the idea.