Creating a Contact Us Form Tutorial

Acs Technologies, Apple Computer Inc

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• Publié par: Miphing
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• Langue: English

Extrait

Creating a Contact Us Form Tutorial

You may want a place on your Web site where visitors can leave contact or personal information for your organization. For example, a visitor might request a welcome pack from your organization, and they need to tell you to whom and where to send it to. Another example would be a form for submitting a prayer request. With Extend you can create and customize as many forms as you, need and place them on your Web site wherever you want.

Creating a Contact Us Form The first form we will create is a Contact Us form. When you have finished this exercise you will have a Contact Us form ready to be utilized by visitors to your Web site. You can enter the information we have provided in the exercise or change the examples to match your organizations needs. To create a Contact Us form Point to Site , then click Article Manager .

Figure 1 Selecting the Article Manager Under Actions , click Create New Article .

Copyright © 2007 ACS Technologies Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Figure 2 Creating a new article Enter Attribute information in the appropriate fields. Make sure the title of your article is both appropriate and specific enough to give a general idea of what kind of content is contained within it. The title may display on your Web site and will be used when performing a search in the Article Manager. For this exercise we titled our article Contact First Church .

Figure 3 Entering attribute information In the Body section of the Create Article page, enter a paragraph or two about your organization and the type of contact information you want to request.

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Figure 4 The Contact Us form introductory paragraph

Tip The Body section is the best place to enter large amounts of information. The Title, Mini-Abstract, and Full Abstract are best for smaller, more specific chunks of information.

Click the Full Abstract tab and enter a brief paragraph about the article.

Figure 5 The Full Abstract Click the Form tab. Enter a name for the form in the Form Name field. For this exercise we named our form Contact Us For More Information . Next, enter the e-mail address of the person who will process the information contained in the form. If you want more than more person to receive and process the information, enter their e-mail addresses and separate them using commas. For example: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]. Enter an e-mail subject in the Email Subject field. Make sure the subject is clear and communicates the contents of the e-mail.

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Select Custom from the Form Type drop-down list, then click Customize .

Figure 6 The Form tab

Note Extend contains a pre-made Contact Us form. However, the form you create using these steps has more options and can be customized to your organizations needs.

Decide what information you want to gather using the form. For this exercise we want to gather information about where to send the welcome packet the visitor requested, so we need the name and mailing address of the visitor. To make certain the visitor enters this information we want to mark the specific fields as Include and Required when we build the form. Marking Include displays the field on the form, marking Required makes entering information in the field necessary to submit the form.

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Figure 7 Selecting the standard fields for the form

Note that in Figure 7 Selecting the standard fields for the form, we selected to have the Phone Number and Email be Included only, and not Required . This way, if a visitor wants to only be contacted by mail they can still submit the form and keep their e-mail address and phone number private. The ability to enter an e-mail address and phone number are still available, but the visitor is not required to enter them to submit the form.

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Also, you can select not to request the visitors physical address and only collect their name and e-mail address. For example, you would use this set up when you have sign-ups for a Wednesday night supper at the church. If most of the attendees are members, then asking for a name and e-mail address would satisfy your needs. We are now ready to add questions to the form. Click Add Custom Field . Decide how you want your questions to be answered. Do you want a one-word answer, or do you want the visitor to enter information? For this exercise we want four questions that utilize all of the answer options. The first question can be answered with one or more choices, so we select Checkbox   from the Type drop-down list. Enter the question you want to display in the Prompt   field. For this exercise we entered How did you find out about First Church? (Check all that apply) . Enter the answers the visitor can pick from in the Choices field. Since this question has multiple combinations of answers, we will separate them using semi-colons. For this exercise we entered Newspaper; Church Newsletter or Bulletin; Friend; Radio Ad; Search Engine . Select Include and Required to make certain the visitor must answer the question.

Figure 8 Entering the first question for the Contact Us form Now we are ready to add the second question. Click Add Custom Field . This question will have multiple available answers, but we want the visitor to select just one, so we are going to use radio buttons. Select Radio Button from the Type drop-down list. Enter the question you want to display in the Prompt field. For this exercise we entered We would like to send you a coffee mug. Why type of coffee do you drink? Enter the answers the visitor can select from in the Choices field. Since the question has multiple possible answers we will separate them with semi-colons. For this exercise we entered Regular; Decaf; Prefer Tea; No thanks . Select Include and Required to make certain the visitor must answer the question.

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Figure 9 Entering a radio button question Click Add Custom Field to begin entering the third question. We want visitors to be able to enter their own text in response to this question, so we select Memo from the Type drop-down list. Enter the question you want to display in the Prompt field. For this exercise we entered Do you have a prayer request we could give to our pastors? All requests are confidential. Since this question requires the visitor to enter their own text, we will leave the Choices field blank. Select Include to have the question display but not make the question required since some visitors may not want to answer the question.

Figure 10 Entering a memo question If necessary, enter instructions about how to fill out the form in the Notes or Instructions text box. Enter a message in the Success Message text box. This message displays when the visitor correctly submits the form. For this exercise we entered Your form was submitted. Thank you!

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Figure 11 The success message

Click Save . Click the Settings tab, under Indexing select Include this article in a web search index .

Figure 12 Selecting Indexing for the article

Click Save . Click the Preview tab to view the article before you publish it to your Web site. After you review the article, it is ready to be published. Posting the Content on Your Web Site This section outlines taking the content you create in the Article Manager, which acts as a filing cabinet of sorts for your online content, to your Web site layout pages located in the Layout Manager. Point to Site , then click Layout Manager . Decide where you want the content to display on your Web site. We want to display the Prayer Request form on the homepage of our Web site. The content will be the first page displayed when you click Site Manager .

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Figure 13 Selecting the Layout Manager For this exercise, we want two columns spanning the Web page. Under Add A Content Row , click Two Columns .

Figure 14 Selecting the Two Columns option We want to display the Contact Us form we created in the second column of the Web page. Under Add Content in the second column, click Article Manager . Click once on the Contact First Church form we created to select it, then click Submit . The Contact Us form content displays in the second column.

Figure 15 Selecting the Article Manager

Figure 16 How the full abstract displays on the layout page

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Point to , and select Custom Display from the drop-down menu. This lets you select the display options for the content piece.

Figure 17 Selecting the Custom Display option On the Attributes tab, make selections from the Channel Page Display Options and Content Page Display Options. For this exercise we selected Title and Full Abstract for the Channel Page Display Options, and Title , Form , and Body for the Content Page Display Options.

Figure 18 Selecting the Channel Page Display and Content Page Display Options Click Save .

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Figure 19 Preview of the sample form

To see what the content looks like before you publish, click Preview . Check the information carefully, and when you are finished close the Preview window. To prevent content from displaying on the presentation side, click Retract on the Layout Manager toolbar. To publish the content, click Publish .

Figure 20 The Layout Manager toolbar

Click OK . The content is now live on your Web site.

Creating a Prayer Request Form You can build the Prayer Request form to automatically be sent to the pastor in charge of prayers, a staff member, or other designated persons. Point to Site , then click Article Manager .

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