Thanks Steve, I have it up now on the site and it is working great. As a relative n00b I put the php in the same file that the form was in. If possible I'd like to work in some sort of image verificaiton to prevent spamming from bots. I know I'd have to change the original form from html to php, which I guess should be ok? I found this on the 'net but I'm not sure exactly how I would have the form capture the variables and whatnot. It has a lot of commenting from it's original owner. Please let me know what you think.
-Pete
<?php
session_start();
// make a string with all the characters that we
// want to use as the verification code
$alphanum = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789";
// generate the verication code
$rand = substr(str_shuffle($alphanum), 0, 5);
// choose one of four background images
$bgNum = rand(1, 4);
// create an image object using the chosen background
$image = imagecreatefromjpeg("background$bgNum.jpg");
$textColor = imagecolorallocate ($image, 0, 0, 0);
// write the code on the background image
imagestring ($image, 5, 5, 8, $rand, $textColor);
// create the hash for the verification code
// and put it in the session
$_SESSION['image_random_value'] = md5($rand);
// send several headers to make sure the image is not cached
// taken directly from the PHP Manual
// Date in the past
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
// always modified
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
// HTTP/1.1
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
// HTTP/1.0
header("Pragma: no-cache");
// send the content type header so the image is displayed properly
header('Content-type: image/jpeg');
// send the image to the browser
imagejpeg($image);
// destroy the image to free up the memory
imagedestroy($image);
?>
