Zem Contact Reborn
Via Peter : 07 May 08 : plugin, textpattern, txp
If you have a website you need a contact form. Your most important visitor might be looking at your site from a friend's laptop, an internet cafe or a public library which might not allow email so to provide a contact form is pretty much a minimum requirement nowadays. (Like other Textpattern plugins, installation of the contact form is a simple copy, paste and activate process that takes a few seconds.)
Zem Contact Reborn
The original zem_contact feedback form is still in use but has not been updated for a long time. Instead, a new version has been adapted and improved by various members of the Textpattern community into its present incarnation as the zem_contact_reborn plugin and is currently maintained by TXP developer, Ruud.
I simply put <txp:zem_contact to="peter@txpq.com" /> into this article and it produced the form below. It has produced an id for each field making styling easy if I wanted. I've left it as is - a simple, accessible form which will validate the visitor's email address and send their message to me.
Flexible Extendable Contact Form
You can move things around:
<txp:zem_contact to="peter@txpq.com">
<txp:zem_contact_textarea label="Your Message" />
<txp:zem_contact_text label="Your Name" />
<txp:zem_contact_email label="Your Email" />
<txp:zem_contact_submit label="Send" />
</txp:zem_contact>
This retains the correct tab order as can be seen on the TXPQ contact form.
For extra protection against spam you can add a checkbox like this one at We Love TXP.
The plugin help section lists many tags, attributes and examples to provide much more than a basic contact form. Jumpstart Auction Procurement, for example, uses zem_contact_reborn as an online reservation form. Using even more options is this order form at Hostile Riding Systems.
Zem_contact_reborn has many uses and perhaps readers will post links to cool or unique examples of this great contact form plugin. All in all zem_contact_reborn is an essential Textpattern plugin that is flexible, reliable and great for communication - just like Textpattern!
Digg this articleReaders said...
2 · candyman
12 May 08A MUST for the TXPO user!
BTW: it is impossible to comment the previous article (Textpattern first steps)…
1 · Ruud van Melick
09 May 08We use this plugin at Undented.com to get bits of news from visitors. Those submissions are then queued on the content tab on the admin side (using a specially developed plugin, highly customized for the needs of this particular website) so the people involved with writing/publishing content can claim such an item and start working on an article based on the submitted information.
Initially we simply set up zem_contact_reborn to send the items per email to all those that managed content on the website, but as the number of people grew, it became more difficult to track who was handling what. So using the built-in callback function, I wrote the aforementioned add-on plugin to store submitted contact form messages in a table for further processing within TXP.