Creating simple HTML forms

[Former Member]

I am currently engaged in applying a new design to a customers SAP driven website.

I have successfully used the theme designer and edited master pages to apply the deisgn and have created some static pages with static information.

The problem I now face is that I need to create some additional pages like a contact forms, brochure request etc... Is there a facility for creating this type of interactive page (where the contents of a simple form is emailed to the site owners) or do I need to create it myself form scratch and provide a link?

Should I create a plugin and if so, how do I then link this to a static page. If I just want to create a dynamic page (I.E. wihout assigning it to a slot) how is this achieved ?

I hope this all makes sense. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks

C

[Former Member]

Hi Caleb,

In the plugins directory there are a number of additional examples of what you can do with Web tools. Specifically to the requirement you are stating is a page called requestblock.ascx, which is a form with some example fields such as name, company, phone, email, and notes.

If you edit the webform1.aspx page to use the requestblock.ascx control by editing the line "..Register TagPrefix="np" ... Src="~/plugins/requestblock.ascx" this will embed the control in the webform1.aspx page which can then be called by the browser. The other option is to refer to this control in a slot in your theme that is of type plugin.

The logic for sending this information is contained in the requestblock.ascx page and you can see how it will send the message to the messaging service queue.

This file also gives the option of adding the contact made by the shopper to the prospecting database, which can be used for follow up contacts.

[Former Member]

Many Thanks for your very helpful reply.

I see now how I can utlise the requestblock plugin and edit it to meet my needs. The only thing I am unclear about is how I got about integrating this with my existing master template. I just want to be able to create a page which looks exactfly like my homepage but with the main slot content replaced with my form. Like a static page but obviously not static !

I am happy to do it manually (but which file should I duplicate and edit?) but is there a way through the SAP admin system to acheive this?

C

[Former Member]

It depends on where you want it to appear. If you look at the webform1.aspx page you can see the control is embeded right after the body tag, but there would be no reason to embed it between div tags for absolute positioning. So long as you make the same Tag Reference at the top, you can embed this control in any aspx page you want(Someone correct me if I'm wrong)

Hopefully that makes sense

Bryce

[Former Member]

Thank again for your help.

I think perhaps I am asking the wrong question.

If you are able to take a quick look at [http://www.atpgifts.co.uk/]. The homepage is great. It has the categories down the left, the search bit etc... what I need is for the contact us link to go to a separate page (currently it is a static page) that looks exactly like the homepage and has the same dynamic content on the left hand side but has the web form control in the content. Is this possible. Which page should I copy and edit? Can I add the webform control to the static page or must I create a new dynamic aspx page ?

If I am not making sense, please let me know. I don't usualy develop in this way. Normally we develop application from scratch so this type of thing would be trivial !!

Thanks again

C

[Former Member]

I solved it..

I found a plugin clled sampleform2.aspx and when I previewd this file on its own it had the header and footer and categories in place and I was able to copy and the adjust the page to meet my needs. This allowed me to create both a contact form a brochure request form for the webiste.

Thanks for you help.

C