I have managed to find answers on the input areas for text and have that working. I have a contact form, two inputs - name & email - and a textarea for information.
Looking online I find answers to use this line of code in the value to retain the information if there is a page refresh -
<input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your Name" value='<?php echo
isset($_POST['name']) ? $_POST['name'] : ''; ?>' required>
Although when I add the value='' to my text area it doesn't work like the others. I changed the names to match too.
Here is the physical page so you can see for yourself - idwithin.xyz/contact.php and I'll paste all my code below.
Thank you.
<div class="contactForm">
<form method="post" action="">
<input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your Name" value='<?php echo
isset($_POST['name']) ? $_POST['name'] : ''; ?>' required>
<input type="text" name="email" placeholder="Your Email" value='<?php echo
isset($_POST['email']) ? $_POST['email'] : ''; ?>' required>
<textarea type="text" name="message" placeholder="Your Message" value='<?
php echo isset($_POST['message']) ? $_POST['message'] : ''; ?>' required>
You don't add value="" to textareas, you render the value between the tags:
<textarea><?php echo isset($_POST['message']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']) : ''; ?></textarea>