QContacts offers the following additional features
- More contact fields: Skype Id and Yahoo Messenger Id. Both can be displayed on your Joomla! made site as plain text or active links to provide your visitors with an easy way to send a message to the contact through these services.
- Up to 3 custom fields can be added to the online contact form.
- An optional captcha verification image can be displayed to prevent automated programs (spambots) from sending spam email messages through the contact form.
Requirements
To activate the anti-spam verification image (captcha) GD graphics libraries (version 2 or higher) with support for TrueType fonts must be present on your server.
How to use it
To add contacts, contacts' categories and set configuration options, login to Joomla! backend. All options are available under Components -> QContacts menu.
Manage Categories
Menu QContacts -> Categories
Each contact must be assigned to a category. You can create as many categories as you need. Functions to add / edit a category and delete, publish or unpublish one or more categories are accessible from the standard toolbar.
Manage Contacts
Menu QContacts -> Contacts
A screen containing a list of all contacts is displayed. You can add / edit a contact and delete, publish or unpublish one or more contacts by selecting the appropriate button on the standard toolbar.
When you choose to add a new contact or edit an existing contact you are presented with a new page where you can enter the following informations
- Name
- Category selectable from a list of all contact categories
- Linked to user. A contact can be linked to an existing user. If you do so you can leave the contact's email field blank as registered user's email will be used as contact's email.
- Contact's Position
- E-mail. If an e-mail address is not specified and the contact is not linked to an existing user, the online form cannot be displayed.
- Address with separate fields for street, town, state/province/county, postal code and country
- Phone, mobile and fax numbers
- Web URL. If published, it will be displayed on the site as active link.
- Skipe Id
- Yahoo Messenger Id
- Miscellaneous Informations. A field for additional informations. It can contain HTML code.
- Contact Image selectable from a list of all images in images/stories folder.
On the right column of the add / edit contact page you can find 3 groups of parameters
Contact Parameters
For each contact's field you have 3 choices available: Show / Hide (field's content will / will not be publicly displayed on the contact's information page on the website), Use Global (field's content will be shown or hidden depending by the corresponding setting in QContacts Global Configuration, as explained below).
Advanced Parameters
You can choose whether an icon or a textual description (or nothing) will be displayed next to each field published on the contact's information page on the website.
E-mail Parameters
- E-mail Form. Show / Hide the online form used to send an email message to the contact.
- E-mail Copy. Show / Hide the check box used to forward a copy of the message to the sender.
- Banned E-mail. Messages sent from email addresses containing one of the words of this list will be blocked (different words must be separated with semi-colons).
- Banned Subject. Messages with a subject containing one of the words of this list will be blocked (different words must be separated with semi-colons).
- Banned Text. Messages containing one of the words of this list in the message body will be blocked (different words must be separated with semi-colons).
- Show Captcha. Show / Hide the anti-spam image verification code (captcha)
For each custom field you can enter the following informations
- Show / Hide custom field. If shown, you can choose whether the field is optional or required. Users must fill in any required field to be able to submit the form.
- Custom field label.
- Custom field type. Text or Textarea
- Custom field size. If field type is text, size must be a single numeric value that will be used for the SIZE attribute of the HTML tag <INPUT>. If field type is textarea, size must contain 2 numeric values separated by a semi-colon that will be used respectively for the ROWS and COLS attributes of the HTML tag <TEXTAREA>.
Global Configuration
By clicking the Preferences button on the page showing the list of contacts, you access QContacts global configuration settings. Any contact parameter set to Use Global when the contact is created/edited takes its value from the corresponding global configuration setting.
Importing Contacts and Categories from com_contact
Menu QContacts -> Tools
Contacts and categories inserted in Joomla! standard contact manager (com_contact) can be imported into QContacts. Be aware to not execute this operation more than once or you will create duplicate records.
Creating a Link to the Component
From the Joomla! Menu Manager (Menus -> Menu Manager) you can create 2 different kind of links to QContacts
- Standard Contact Layout: direct link to the information page and online form (if activated) of a single contact.
- Contact Category Layout: link to a list with all contacts of a given category. On the menu item creation/editing page you have available a group of parameters to control the list layout: you can show/hide table headings and determine what contact's fields (position, email, phone, mobile, fax numbers) will be displayed on the list.
License
QContacts is free software distributed under the GNU/GPL license (version 3)
