Create a Contact Form

It is common for a website to include a contact form for users to submit their messages. You can create a contact form which sends the message to your desired email address in your A4DeskPro project with a few easy steps. The contact form could be opened from a hyperlink within a page, or it could be opened directly from the menu.

Note:   The contact form requires PHP support from your website. Check with your hosting company to see if your hosting plan supports PHP.

To create or edit a contact form

1. Click the Contact Form Settings button on the Toolbar, or select Contact Form from the Edit menu.

2. The Contact Form Settings window opens.

   

3. In the Display Information section, the company name and baseline has already been filled. Enter a title of your form in the Form Title field, and provide a short description of your form in the Description field. The description will be shown below the title of the form.

4. In the Send to section, enter your desired email address in the Your Email field for the submitted forms, and set the title of the email in the Subject field. When the form is submitted, the message will send to the desired email address with your predefined subject.

5. Click the Preview button or select Preview in the Display Information section to preview the form. Your default web browser will be launched and show you how the form looks like.

6. Click the Apply button and the contact form is set.

7. You can further adjust the caption of the fields and the warning messages by clicking More Settings to the bottom right side of the Contact Form Settings window. This is useful if you want the form to submit other information, or to localize your form with another language.

   

8. In the Contact Form Caption section, you can replace the standard names with your captions. For example, you would like to know the State where your visitors come from. Then you may replace the caption Country with State and the form will show State instead of Country in that caption.

9. In the Other Message section, you can replace these standard warning messages with your own version of messages.

10. Click the Preview button to launch an instance of your default browser to see the result, and click Apply to finalize the form.

Adding the form

There are 2 ways to add the contact form to your project:

• by adding as a hyperlink in the page content, or

• by pointing a menu item to the form page

Adding as a link within the page

1. Select the desired page in the item tree under the Menus tab of the Menus/Design/HTML and Edit Item panel and click the Text radio button in the Edit Item panel below. The Text tab is opened in the Main Information/Menu Header and Text panel.

2. Use your mouse to put the caret on the place where you want to add the link to the form.

3. Click the Form button under the panel and it opens the Insert a Link dialog.

   

4. The Link Address field has been automatically filled with the hyperlink to the form, and enter a short description of the link in the Link Description field.

   

5. Under the Show Link In section, you can specify how the form page is displayed in your default browser:

• Same window: the form will be opened in the same browser window.

• Popup window: the form will be opened in a new popup window.

Note:   Some browsers may block popups by their default popup blocker.

• Target window: enter the name of the target window and the form will be opened to the desired window. This is useful if you have created a website using Frames.

• Javascript Popup with custom size: similar to popup window but it needs Javascript support. You can specify the width and the height of the popup window here.

  Note:   Javascript is required to be supported and turned on in your browser.

Adding the form as part of the menu

1. Select the desired page in the item tree under the Menus tab of the Menus/Design/HTML and Edit Item panel and click the Link radio button in the Edit Item panel below. The Link tab is opened in the panel below.

2. Click Set as Contact Form and the Location field is automatically populated with the hyperlink to the form.

   

3. You may select the Target Window by using the arrow to the right of the field, or enter your desired target directly in the box.