Beginner's Guide

Figure 1: Contact area
For this example, I have created two categories: cocoate and team. The team category is a sub category
of cocoate. It would have been possible to add an image and a description but I have decided to fill the
title field only (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Contact categories
For each contact form I need a contact with an email address. Contacts can be assigned to users or
stand alone. In this case, I have created three stand alone contacts related to the cocoate category without
linking them to a user. I have also created two contacts related to the team category and additionally
related to an existing user account (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Contacts
If any of the data changes, such as a phone number, for example, it would be nice for related users to
be able to make these changes directly from their user profile on the website without having to access the
administrator area. For this task Joomla provides the User-Profile plug-in. You just have to activate it in
Extensions - Plug-ins. In the user profile, a new area is displayed for the profile fields, which is connected to
the contact component.
Joomla! 2.5 - Beginner’s Guide
Monday, 30 January 2012! Page 161