Email Validation - second email box in sign up (verify spelling)

When signing up for an account, many sites offer a second email box to help catch any spelling errors.

The idea is to require the new user to enter their email twice when signing up so that the user is more certain that they have submitted the correct email address. The cart script does a validation thing to check.

If the content in each email box do not match, then an error is generated saying that the email addresses do not match and requesting that they re-enter their email address (in each box)

I've had more than a few customers say that they hadn't received email receipts, and a check in their accouns shows a bad email address:

[email protected]

(should be [email protected])

This would be a nice help

:smile:

Does ANYBODY actually type it twice? Copy & Paste!

Maybe there could be a popup that says, "Hey, dude.....are you sure this is your email addy?", and display that field value in the popup, which they then could click OK to confirm or click CANCEL to fill in another value and try again. At least it's some kind of test. This would help reduce bad email addresses, and help to ensure that fewer customers are not getting their email receipts and order updates. HTH :smile:

Ryk:

Does ANYBODY actually type it twice? Copy & Paste!

Agreed. But it still makes the customer focus/look at the email address for a second time, after typing. Then much more likely to catch a mistake.

Personally this feature has helped me a number of times when I initally entered an incorrect email address on someone else site.

Also I am certain if the feature would be in Zen Cart I would observe fewer duplicate registrations from the same person. I have noticed misspellings in a number of "initial" registrations, then after registration the customer checks out with purchase or just adds items to shop cart with intent to come back again. Then when customer returns they are unable to login or check their order, or otherwise. So some end up creating a new account (with the correct email address) and then submit a duplicate order, etc. And/or they send a message to us asking why they cannot login, or why they have not heard from us, or why we have not responded to their order submission, etc.

On one health care education related shop I observe this issue constantly where many of my customers are elderly, with not great eyesight or nimble fingers.

I understand that since "saved form history" and "saved passwords" is enabled by default in most current web browsers, this issue is not a huge issue for some shopowners and their customers, but many of my customers will clear their "private data" and lose this info and/or disable the checkbox to save password or form history.

Providing an option in Zen Cart to support on registration page email address validation is a great idea.

Woody

I think it's a good idea, but only if it's configurable by the admin.

Woodymon:

Providing an option in Zen Cart to support on registration page email address validation is a great idea.

Yeah. It would also help with a lot of "Hey, I can't login to my account" situations

I found some email validation javascript here:

http://www.robertprice.co.uk/robblog/archive/2004/7/Comparing_Email_Addresses_In_JavaScript.shtml

From the author's site:

I needed to write a quick JavaScript that could check if two email addresses were the same or not today. As it's so simple, I thought I'd share it.

Firstly we put the following JavaScript into a script tag.

function compareEmails(myForm) { if (myForm.email.value != myForm.email2.value) { alert("Your email addresses don't match. Please double check"); return false; } else { return true; } }

> 
> It takes a form, and compares the values of the fields called email and email2. If they are the same it returns true which lets the form submit normally.
> 
> However, if email and email2 are different it brings up an alert box telling our submitter the values are different, and returns false. Returning false means the script won't submit to the script specified in the action parameter so the user has to confirm their email address again.
> 
> The following HTML code gives an example of the scripts use.
> ```
<form action="dosomething.pl" onSubmit="compareEmails(this);"> Email :<input type="text" name="email" /> <br /> Verify Email: <input type="text" name="email2" /> <br /> <input type="submit" /> </form>

Of course the code can be used to compare any fields and not just email addresses. All you need to do is to change the field names in the JavaScript.

Enjoy!

1. What should be the best way to implement this in the create_account cart pages?

2. Also, should this kind of thing also be used when a logged-in user is editing their MyAccount stuff?

Many thanks :smile:

Rowan:

I think it's a good idea, but only if it's configurable by the admin.
You mean the option whether to use email verification or not?

You don't need to reinvent the wheel :D http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&cPath=40_47&products_id=204

Just not sure if the following issue has been addressed:

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58556

Definitely could use this, just had another email mixup:

[email protected]
[email protected]

Customer created two accounts.

This is the confirm email mod, it is a text file that tells you what things to add/change to make a confirmation email text field. It is also in the downloads but it is just a text file so I attached it for you, I just finished making the changes on mine and it worked fine, im using version 1.3.7.

Can anyone confirm whether the following issue was fixed in the 1.3 version of the confirm email address entry mod (which is the latest version in the downloads section):

http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showpost.php?p=330027&postcount=1

Many thanks :smile:

If you're getting a PHP error after editing the files described in the 'Confirm Email Address Entry' text file try removing the last '}' in step 4. Worked for me.