Symphony.

Hey guys.

Where do i find the in-built contact form? is it a data source or a utility which i can add into any page?

What do you mean with 'in-built form'? There is no 'out of the box' contact form (extension) I believe but you could have a look at some Ensemble and might find something there. Then there is e.g. the Form Controls utility by Nick Dunn which makes creating forms easier.

I have not used Form Controls or copied an existing form because it is really quite easy to build a simple contact form from scratch.

oh..i recall when i installed symphony there was a contact form already on the about page, just wondered where that would have gone?

i am currently writing a new form from scratch which will use php.

Yeah, when you install Symphony you can start with an 'Ensemble', a basic site that's already set up. See Ensembles. These Ensembles will often contain a contact form, so you could check those out.

(I never start with an ensemble so I don't really know much about them)

"i am currently writing a new form from scratch which will use php."

This sounds like you are making it too complex. There's no need for custom PHP in a simple contact form. Symphony provides you with everything you need:

Simply start by creating a Section (Contact Messages) for your contact form messages (containing e.g. name, email and message fields).

Create a Symphony Page that will contain your form (e.g. /contact/) and, to start, build your HTML form like you would normally would in that page's template.

Now look into Symphony Events and create a create contact message event that you would attach to your contact page.

Make sure to use the proper field names in your form (e.g. name="fields[email]" etc.). The contact Template from your Ensemble will give you an idea about these.

You would probably want to attach some (standard) Event Filters to your event so that the form will send an email, prevent XSS injection attacks etc.

This should get you started with a simple contact form.

And on the event page in the backend there is some example markup shown to help you with the proper field names and expected event notifications.

awesome!! i will have a look :)

would i be able to push form entries through to an email using this method too?

Yup. There's the default Symphony Sent email Event Filter that you'll add to your event. When you need more control over the emailing flow I'd advice you to look into the Email Template Manager (ETM) extension. But look into that after you've used the default filter, it is a bit more complex.

i am currently developing in localhost, so i know that email will not work until i place the site in a live environment (considering doing this now actually).

do the messages get stored anywhere else in the symphony system? or are they purely pushed out into email. I just did a couple of test entries but (of course) they didnt email.

Sorry that i am coming across quite dumb haha.

or are they purely pushed out into email

Yep.

If you go to System -> Preferences you can change the Email Gateway used when sending emails. This way, you can rely on gmail (for example) to send mails locally too.

@olly - What alpacaaa said: you could set it up so that local mailing works. Also: if you've set up the Section like I described above you should also see your entries under the Section you set up (e.g. Contact Messages) in the Symphony admin I guess.

currently trying to install symphony onto a real server.

brick. wall. face. combo.

Basically, i got a clean installation of symphony and uploaded it to my hosting via FTP. The directory was called Symphony...

http://www.my-domain.com/symphony

i then grabbed my database from localhost, exported the information as a .sql and imported the file as a query on my servers phpmyadmin.

I then went to www.my-domain.com/symphony and something awesome happened. er.

The path of the site then auto-changed itself to www.my-domain.com/symphonytest/symphony (this is because the localhost install was in a folder called symphonytest).

I have tried to change the config.php file to no avail, so removed the install and dropped the database completely, but even though there is now no content on my ftp, the path still does exactley the same thing.

grr.

i went into .htaccess and couldnt see anything which would be changing the path behavior. any ideas?

^ by the way i realise that this is not a related discussion, so i will be happy to make a new discussion if necessary.

Yep, it's OT, but quickly to answer. You probably have a Rewrite Base rule at the top of your .htaccess.

RewriteBase /symphonytest

should be updated to

RewriteBase /symphony