Home > Developers > Contact Form Setup

Form Question Settings

General Question Attributes (available for most question types)

Question Specific Attributes

ADVANED - Include Element File (*.ctp)

This is a special form question, because it isn't really a question! Wherever this question is placed in the form question order,  an element file will be included.  You can specify which element to render by entering the element name into the Name field when editing or adding a form question.

NOTE: custom form inputs defined within an element will be displayed, however the data entered into those inputs will not be used or saved by the form processor in any way.

Heading / Text

By default, this will output whatever text you enter for the "question" text as a header. 

tag - [h3|false|any valid html tag] : Defaults to wrapping the text entered with h3 tags.  You can override the default tag by specifying a different tag.

EXAMPLES

tag:false | By setting this to false you will essentially turn off the default behavior of wrapping the text with html tags.  You will have plaintext output. This is how you can have custom html at any point of your form.

tag:h3 id="site-avenger" class="any css class" | Advanced usage.  You will end up with:

NOTE: the ending tag is calculated based on the first space encounter.  In this case, the space between h3 and id.

Making "Reply-To:" Address Use Customer's Email Address 

It is now possible to configure a contact form to automatically insert the customer's email address into the email "Reply To" field.  If you have a field in your contact form where you collect an email address, you can follow the instructions below to setup the confirmation email receipt (which goes to the site owner email address, as set in $config) to use the customer's email address as the reply-to field.  This allows the site owner to simply press reply in any email client and have the email addressed to the customer-supplied email address.

Setup Form to Use Sender Email as Reply-to:

Get to the edit screen of the form you wish to setup.  In the Admin Tab Add the following parameters to Additional Settings:

Identify Form Question to Use as Email Address

Now you will need to identify the correct form question as the "source" for the email address to be used.  You do this by editing the form questions, to identify the correct form input to use as the email address. 

Go to the Questions Tab on the form edit screen.  In the Attributes text area, add the following setting:

Can't You Guess Which Form Input to Use?

Yes, in most cases we could have guessed, but we decided against that approach.  The method described above (var: email) ensures that the correct form input is used for the email address in all cases.  We decided against any auto-magic and/or guessing because in the event there are multiple form questions with the text "e-mail" in them, which one would we use?  We favor consistency and convention so var:email is here to stay.

Two-Stage Contact Forms

A two-stage contact form is unique in its approach.  Often times, there is a need to get customer contact information without burdening potential customers with too many questions.  However, some customers will gladly provide all information.  What do you do?  Two-stage contact forms to the rescue...

How 2-Stage Contact Forms Work

The customer is presented with a basic form (first stage).  This could be as simple as Name, Phone and Email.  They hit the submit button on the form to submit their request for contact, quote, etc.  The next screen the customer sees is the complete/advanced form (second stage).  You can choose to re-display the previous questions (with answers auto-filled) or ask additional questions.  Some common uses for the second stage form are sales volume questions, demographics, timelines, really anything that isn't critical to simply getting a new lead.  The idea is to make the sales funnel start at the lowest possible threshold.

Form Settings to Create a 2-Stage Form

type: 2stage (select 'Two-Stage Form' through Site Avenger)

bypass: [true|false] (this allows the first step of the form to be bypassed; questions on the first form would need to be re-displayed on the second form, they just won't be auto-filled)

Question Attributes specific to 2-Stage Forms

redisplay: [true|false] (set to true to redisplay questions from step1 on step2. question data will be re-validated on each submit)

Also in this section: