Contact Form

The Contact Form page type lets visitors send messages and attachments to you via an easy-to-use form. You can completely customise the page to your specific requirements, including the use of checkboxes, radio buttons, text fields, pop-up menus and more.

The Contact Form requires PHP to be installed on your server. If you are unsure whether your server supports PHP, contact your hosting company before attempting to use the Contact Form page type.

Note: Due to Apple's MobileMe service (formerly .Mac) not supporting PHP, the Contact Form will not work with any site published to MobileMe.

Figure 1: Contact Form View

The Contact Form supports six different types of page elements:

Each element includes an option to make it a required item on the published form. If you require that visitors must complete any given page element before the form can be submitted, click the element’s ‘Required’ checkbox. Unchecked elements on the form will not require visitors to complete them.

When visitors submit a completed Contact Form on your website, an email is sent to the address you have specified in the form’s setup page, containing the content of the form:

When you add a Contact Form page, its form field list is initially pre-configured with four elements:

To remove any of the existing elements, single-click on the list item and click the [-] button at the bottom of the list. To add a new field item to the form field list, click the [+] button. Type a label for the new field’s name and then select the desired field type. If the field must be completed by the visitor before the form can be submitted, click the ‘Required’ checkbox.

Tip: When typing the field name for a newly-added element, use a delimiter like a colon (:) or a hyphen (–) to separate the label from the content provided by your visitors. Without a delimiter, the label and the content will be linked together in the message you receive.

Once you have added all of the elements required for your Contact Form page, you can re-arrange their order by dragging each element to the desired position in the list.

Popup Menus and Radio Buttons.

If your Contact Form includes either a Popup Menu or Radio Buttons element, you should create a list of selection values for each of them. By clicking on the name of the desired Popup Menu or Radio Buttons element in the form field list, the Popup/Radio Values list at the bottom of the Contact Form page becomes available.

To add the first selection value in the Popup/Radio Values list, click the [+] button below the list. The first line will be highlighted and the word ‘Name’ will appear in it. Double click the line to select it and type the first selection value. Repeat as needed to add all selection values. To remove a selection value, select it in the list and then click the [–] button.

Contact Form Setup

After setting up your Contact Form page, click the ‘wrench’ icon beneath the Page List to change the settings for the contact form. The Page Inspector will open and give you the following options.