How do I get my $_Post to work

Question

I am trying to get my website to submit an email every time someone would message (right now I'm just working on getting my variables to work...). It's a learning process so I'm here for it all and just trying to teach myself. However non of the GLOBAL php commands like $_post and $_get are working. I even tried different ways but to no avail.

<?php
$person = $_Post['pName'];
echo "before";
echo $person;
echo "after";
echo $_Get['pName'];
?>

but this never submitted anything. My form has the method="post" and the action="TestSend.php". Yes the file name is TestSend.php too. Also, the php DOES display the "beforeafter" in the browser after I click "Submit" on my website.

If you want to test it yourself it is on my website at www.turnedbrigade.com.
One last question, do I need the html tag and the body tag with my php file?

Here's the html coding.

<form action="TestSend.php" method="post">
Name: <input name="pName" type="text" placeholder="Name"/>
Email: <input name="pEmail" placeholder="Email"/><br/>
Message: <br/><textarea name="pMessage" rows="8" cols="60" placeholder="Message"></textarea><br/>
<input type="submit"/>              
</form>

Edited:

<?php
$from =  $_POST['pName'];
$email = $_POST['pEmail'];
$subject = "Forums";
$message = $_POST['pMessage'];
mail("email will go here", $subject, $message, $from);
?>

For this email part of it, my page just goes blank and I never get anything posted past it.

HTML

HTML http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/6872/c7a3.png PHP

Answer 1

$_POST and $_GET is the correct variable names, they are part of the superglobals family. Php is case sensitive so you really need to use capital letters, so change

$person = $_POST['pName'];

And

echo $_GET['pName'];

Answer 2

Try with $_GET and $_POST. Not sure where did you see them not capitalized ever...

And to answer your other question, if you're not planning to render the page (show it in the browser), but only do some database communication, sending email, etc... you don't need any HTML. However, all your pages that will show in the browser (the form, the 'thank you' page, etc.), they need to have a proper HTML structure. It doesn't matter you're using PHP inside of them, they are still rendered as HTML in the end.

You might notice that the pages might work even without the proper HTML structure (so no doctype, no html, head, body...), but don't ever use that. Apart from being a horrible practice, it's actually your browser taking care of your bad HTML for you, and you should never, ever rely on that. Read about how proper HTML is written (there are millions of tutorials), and use it properly.

UPDATE

For your latest update, it's normal that the page is blank - you're not outputting anything. Try changing your mail line:

mail("email will go here", $subject, $message, $from);

to something like this:

if (mail("email will go here", $subject, $message, $from)) {
    echo 'Yay! Email sent!';
}
else {
    echo 'There is an error somewhere, email not sent!';
}

And you'll see that the code is working fine.