Topic: Point at a web page, rather than an email address, for top menu's Contact link.
Topic type:
In Kete 1.3, you can opt to have the "Contact" link on every page of a Kete site be a link to a web page rather than an mailto: email address link.
As described in Ticket #66, you can reconfigure your site to point at a web page (Contact URL) rather than an email address. This topic will describe the technical details for using the Contact URL setting, as well as a useful strategy for how to set up a Contact page.
Using a web page for the Contact link
Let's say that you want your site's users to be able to contact your organization by phone or snail mail at a physical address rather than simply email you. You probably want a "Contact Us" web page that describes all the different ways that your users can get a hold of the person they need to. In Kete 1.3 and later you can use the new "Contact URL" system setting to designate a web page as the "Contact" link on all of Kete site's pages, but first you need to create a "Contact Us" web page!
I'll describe how you might do this and then how to set it up as the Contact link. In addition, I'll show how to use a basket's administrative contact feature to be able to change who is the email contact for your site.
Setting up the "Contact Us" web page
Where should I put the "Contact Us" page on my site?
Before you create a contact us page, you need to decide where to put it. My feeling is that the About basket of a Kete site is the most logical place, though you could make an argument for the Help basket too. By putting the Contact Us page in the About basket we can also take advantage of the basket's contact administrator functionality to designate who should get emails for the site. I'll talk about this more later.
So, in this example, we'll use the About basket. In order to be able to put a new "Contact Us" topic in the About basket, you need to be a member (or moderator or basket administrator).
By default the only user that has member of the basket is actual the default site administrator account that originally created the basket when the site was set up. This is actually just what we want and illustrates a handy process that we can use to add things as "the management", i.e. the generic account that appears to users as the embodiment of the site.
What we want to do first is "login as" the default site administrator account, if you aren't already. Assuming that you have a separate account that is also a site administrator, here are the steps.
- Login with your account (if you aren't already)
- Scroll to the bottom of any page and find the Administrator's Toolbox
- Click site members
- Click the site administrators link on the page heading's line
- Find the default administrator account, it will have a login of "admin" usually
- Click the corresponding Login as user link under the Administrative Actions column
- Confirm that this is indeed what you want to do.
Optional: Enable use of basket's administrative contact feature
- Go to the about basket (click on About from the top menu from any page)
- Scroll down to the Tools for basket: About box
- Click preferences
- Scroll down to the Administrative Contact question, click the Enabled option if isn't already selected, and hit Update
That's it for the moment. See Set up a different account to get the Contact Us emails later if you want to change who get's the contact emails.
Creating the Contact Us topic
Now that we are the default site administrator we can create new "Contact Us" topic in the About basket.
- Click Add Item from any page's top menu (or equivalent on your site)
- Make sure to choose About for the Add in? drop down menu!
- Choose the generic "Topic" (or equivalent on your site) for About a? drop down.
- Fill out the form, you may skip the short summary if you want, with your information.
- Assuming you want to use the contact basket administrator feature to give your user's a form that will email the appropriate person, add a new link (e.g. "email us", highlight it, then click on the chain icon for the link editor) that points at http://your_site/about/contact for its URL.
- Click the Create button.
- On the resulting page, copy the URL from your browser's location bar
Setting the "Contact" link in the top menu to point at the new "Contact Us" topic
Now that the web page is in place and we have it's URL, we can reconfigure our site to use it for the "Contact" link. These steps assume that you are still logged in as the default administrator account and that this account is still a technical administrator.
- Scroll to the bottom of any page and find the Administrator's Toolbox
- Click reconfigure site
- Click Server
- Paste in the URL you copied for your new topic into the Contact URL setting and click Save
- Click Restart Server button
That's it if all you want to do is to have the "Contact" link point at your new "Contact Us" topic. See below if you want to have the "email us" link be sent to another account than the default site administrator.
Optional: Set up a different account to get the Contact Us emails
Assuming that the account you want to designate as the contact for the contact form is already created and that you are still logged in as the default site administrator account, here's what you do:
- Go to the About basket (About link in top menu) and scroll down to the Tools for basket: About box
- Click the members link
- Fill out the Search for new members form to find the account you want, check the account's check box, then click Add members button.
- Under the Change to column for your new member, click Admin
- On the resulting page, click the 2 administrators link after About Members headline
- On the resulting page, under the Change to column for the default site administrator account, click Member
Your newly designated About basket administrator account will get the emails from the Contact form for the About basket.
If later you want to change the account that gets the emails, simply go through the same process, but swapping in the relevant accounts.
was the last to edit Point at a web page, rather than an email address, for top menu's Contact link.
on Sep 26th, 2011 at 10:36 AM
created Point at a web page, rather than an email address, for top menu's Contact link.
on Oct 1st, 2010 at 1:04 PM
