Contact Form

A contact form can be either a page or pagelet. It lets site visitors contact you easily and securely by filling in a few details.

A Contact Form page.

A Contact Form pagelet.

After clicking the "Send" button, visitors are redirected to a special page on Karelia's website that informs them whether their message has been successfully sent. This page should match the design of your site as closely as possible, however there may be some small differences for things like graphical text or if you have customized the design. Visitors are then able to return to your site.

In some rare cases, Karelia may not be able to determine the site from which a visitor came originally. In which case, no link is offered back to your site. Visitors will have to use the back button to return.

Testing

Before publishing your site, it is a good idea to test the Contact Form to ensure it is correctly set up.

To test the Contact Form:

From the Site menu select "Export Site…" Export the site to a suitable location such as a folder on your Desktop, entering the URL of your site if needed.
Open the folder you exported to and then open the "Index_.html" file in it with your web browser.
Navigate to the Contact Form.
Enter a test message and send it.

If all is correct you should receive the message in a moment. If not, it could be because:

You have entered the "send to" e-mail address incorrectly. Correct it using the Inspector.
The incoming e-mail is being marked as spam. Check your junk mail filter and adjust it if required.

Security

In order to protect your e-mail address from spammers, Contact Forms encrypt it. When a visitor clicks the "Send" button, their message is actually sent to Karelia's servers. The server then decrypts your address and relays the message to you. (Karelia do not log or monitor the contents of the messages being sent; however, we may monitor other information such as referring pages, to check for abuse of the service. If you are concerned about your messages being passed through a Karelia server, you are welcome to install the form processor script on your own server.)

It is not a good idea for your website's visitors to send you highly confidential messages using a Contact Form. Messages are sent "in the clear" from your website to Karelia's servers, and are then sent out as unencrypted e-mails.

Settings

To edit a Contact Form page:

Click the Contact Form in the Site Outline to select it.
Open the Page Inspector. The top half contains general page attributes; the bottom holds settings specific to the Contact Form as listed below.

To edit a Contact Form pagelet:

Select the Contact Form by clicking it.
Open the Selection Inspector. The top half contains general pagelet attributes; the bottom holds settings specific to the Contact Form as listed below.

Form Labels

Form labels can be positioned above or to the side of each field of the Contact Form.

The labels and the title of the "Send" button can be customized if required. Use the "Customize Form Labels" popup button to select a label and then enter a new name for it. When you first create a Contact Form, Sandvox attempts to give the labels appropriately localized titles.

E-mail Address

Enter your e-mail address into the "Send to" box. You can have e-mails sent to multiple addresses at the same time by entering them separated by commas like so:

me@example.com, someoneelse@example.com

To keep your address secure, Sandvox encrypts it. To find out how and why, please see the security section of this article.

Message Subject

Use the "Subject Type" popup button to choose how site visitors can select their message subject.

Text Field

Visitors can enter any subject.

Selection List

A restricted list of possible subjects which are entered in the Inspector. Separate the subjects with commas. e.g.

cheddar, stilton, edam

Hidden

Hides the subject field from view, giving all messages a fixed subject as entered in the Inspector.