Beginner's Guide

CONTACTS
Every website needs a contact form. Depending on the provider of the website sometimes you may
need only one, sometimes more of these forms. If it is a website for a company with more than one
department, they may want to have a contact form for every department. Perhaps you would like to
display a contact form for every employee or every user account.
All of this can be done by using the Joomla contact component.
As we have already seen (Read more in chapter: Contact Form), it's quite easy to set up a simple contact
form. Simply create a contact, assign it to a category and create a menu item.
EXAMPLE
If several contact forms are needed, you should think about the underlying structure. Similar to
article categories, it is possible to assign contact categories to menu items. As a result, you will see a list of
contacts assigned to that category. If you click on the name or the title of these contacts, you will see
more details and the form itself.
I have tried different scenarios with the contact component and the possibilities are amazing! As
everywhere in Joomla you have the option to create nested categories and different menu item types. In
options (Components - Contact - Options), you can, for example, configure the appearance of the contact
form (Slider, Ta b, no formatting) and set an impressive number of other parameters.
As an example I have created a contact area for our company with three contact forms for different
kinds of inquiries and a contact form for each team member. By clicking on the links, the contact form
and additional details will appear (Figure 1).
Joomla! 2.5 - Beginner’s Guide
Monday, 30 January 2012! Page 160