Forgive me if I'm not using the correct terminology. There is a huge learning curve for web design! I am using CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2008 to create web pages that I will upload to LunarPages. Two features I'd like to include are:

1) an interactive poll where site visitors read a poll question and select an answer choice. The page would then immediately refresh and the site visitor could see the poll results thus far (as a bar graph, pie chart, etc.). From what I can tell, CoffeCup does not have a script for this. Neither does LunarPages' Fantastico. There seems to be numerous scripts on the web, but which ones are easy and safe (no hidden viruses, etc.)? I am using only the visual editor, so this needs to be fairly simple. Reading the information on some poll script sites, it sounds like the poll would be on a different server than the rest of my web page. It's pretty confusing.

2) a "contact me" button which would open up an Outlook (or some other e-mail system) box with my e-mail address already inserted as the recipient.

If you can help a newbie, I'd apprectiate it!

applestoapples,

You likely could conduct a poll using the CoffeeCup Form Builder. Write your question in the HTML Editor. Then have a small form with radio buttons for the responses and a submit button. Set the data to go to MySQL on your server, and let the form redirect to a page that reads the poll data. I use 1and1 as my hosting company, and I think they restrict access to MySQL to protect the data. You would have to check with LunarPages or someone that uses them to find out if this suggestion is even possible.

Your second item is easy.

<a href="mailto:you@somplace.com"><img src="button.gif" title="contact button" alt="contact button"></a>

You can also make that code insert the subject if you so desire. Build the button using any graphics program (I use the free GIMP) and you can even start with a button from one of the CoffeeCup programs, and just add text.

Hope this gives you some ideas for what you can do.