Receive email messages from your website visitors via RapidWeaver's built-in Contact Form
The Contact Form page type allows your website visitors to send you emailed messages and attachments. Contact forms are easy to create and use, and are customizable with a variety of available options.
Contact Forms require PHP to be installed on your web hosting provider's server. Additionally, the Contact Form uses a PHP Mailer script to send messages. The vast majority of web hosting providers support PHP, however not all support the ability to send email via PHP due to it's potential to be abused for SPAM. If you are unsure whether your web hosting provider supports PHP or the ability to send email via PHP, please contact them directly to inquire before publishing a page created with the Contact Form page.
The Contact Form page supports six different form elements:
Text Field: a single-line text field.
Text Area: allow visitors to type larger messages, without line or character-limits.
Check Boxes: allow visitors to select options by clicking its box.
Popup Menus: allow visitors to make a single selection from a defined popup menu.
Radio Buttons: allow visitors to make a single selection from a defined list of options.
Attachments: allow visitors to attach a file when submitting the form.
Each of these elements can be marked as a Required field, meaning that item must be selected or completed before a visitor can successfully submit the form.
When you add a Contact Form to your project, some form fields are pre-configured that enable visitors to send a message to the address specified in the Page Inspector. If you allowed RapidWeaver to access your Contacts when first launching the app, the primary email address specified in your “Me” card will be pre-filled for the contact form to use.
To add a new field item to the form field list, click the [+] button at the bottom of the Form options area. Type a label for the new field’s name and then select the desired field type. To remove a field item, select it and click the [–] button at the bottom of the Form options area.
When typing the field name for a newly-added element, use a separator at the end, such as a colon (:) or a hyphen (–). This ensures that the label and visitor’s content is separated in the submitted form.
You can rearrange the order of a field item by selecting it, then dragging it to your preferred location.
The Contact Form includes popup-menu and radio-button field types. These allow you to create a list of options of which your web visitor can select one. When the popup-menu or radio-button field type is selected in the upper section of the Contact Form's edit area, you can then add, edit, and remove options in the lower section of the Contact Form’s edit area.
Click the [+] button shown below the Options list to add a new option for the select popup-menu/radio-button, then type the desired Option name. Double-click the Option name to edit the item. Repeat as required to add your desired number of options for the selected form element.
To remove an option, simply select the it within the Options list and then click the [–] button.
Now that you've got your Contact Form created with all your desired fields, it's time to configure the settings so that when your web visitor clicks the Submit button, you receive the form in your email Inbox!
General Tab
On the Contact Form Page, in RapidWeaver go to Inspector > Contact Form > General tab (Option-Command-6).
Send To: Enter the email address you want the submitted form to be sent to.
From Name: Select the form field you'd like to appear as the name of the person the email was sent from. In the above example we use the "Your Name" field.
From Email: Select the form field which is used for your web visitor's email address. In the above example we use the "Your Email" field.
Subject: Select the form field that will be used as the subject in any emails received from the form. In the above example we use the "Subject" field.
Show Reset button: Select this option if you'd like to give your web visitor the ability to clear the form completely. Useful if your web visitor would like to start over with filling in their form details.
Required: Enter the message you'd like the form to display if a required field is left blank when submitting the form.
Symbol: Enter the symbol that will be used to highlight required fields on your form.
Submit Button: Enter the text you'd like displayed for your "Submit" button. This is "Submit" by default.
Reset Button: Enter the text you'd like displayed for your "Reset" button. This is "Reset" by default.
Advanced Settings: (Generally only used for troubleshooting form deliverability issues)
Send email using your email address - By default, the Contact Form sends the form email using your web visitor's entered email address. For example if your web visitor enters the email address aaron@example.com in the "Your Email" form field, you will receive an email from aaron@example.com in your Inbox. In some cases web hosts do not allow email to be sent from an email address that's not linked to your account (to prevent SPAM). If you are not receiving emails sent via your Contact Form, you can try enabling this "Send email using your email address" setting by checking its box and republishing your Contact Form page. With this setting enabled the Contact Form will not use your web visitors email address to send the form, instead it will use the email address you enter in the "Send To" field (#1 from above) to send the form. In this case it's important the address you enter in the "Send To" field is linked to your web hosting account.
Define email address in PHP mail script - This setting might be required on some web hosts (for example if your website is hosted on a Windows based server). We generally don't recommend enabling this setting unless you are trying to troubleshoot issues with receiving your Contact Form submissions.
Customizable Text Tab
On the Contact Form Page, in RapidWeaver go to Inspector > Contact Form > Customizable Text tab (Option-Command-6).
Header: Here you can enter any text, images, or other information that you'd like to appear above your form's fields.
Footer: Here you can enter any text, images, or other information that you'd like to appear below your form's fields.
Email Sent Feedback: Here you can enter the text that will appear on the page after your web visitor clicks the "Submit" button. Generally this is used to inform your web visitor that the form was successfully submitted, as well as provide any "next steps" they should take after submitting the form. This text is only displayed on the Contact Form page, it's not emailed to the web visitor.
If you are having troubles receiving form emails, below are some general steps that usually help to resolve potential issues.
Make sure you are using an email address linked to your web hosting account in the "Send To" field in your Contact Form settings. For example let's say your Contact Form page is located at https://www.example.com/contact-us. In this case, you would want your "Send To" email address to be connected to that domain "example.com" (e.g. contactus@example.com). You would not want to use a GMAIL or HOTMAIL address.
Some web hosts might block Contact Form's from sending email if the website is not SSL secured. It's important that your Contact page is secured with an SSL certificate and loads over https (e.g. https://www.example.com/contact-us). If your website or contact page is not SSL secured, you will want to reach out to your web hosting provider and ask that they help you get an SSL certificate installed and activated on your website.
It's important that you have valid SPF and DKIM records set up for your website's domain name. In a lot of cases, if these DNS records are not set up (or set up incorrectly), outgoing emails sent from your web hosting server will not be received (this includes your form emails). The steps to get valid SPF and DKIM records set up vary depending on your web hosting provider, so it's best to ask your web hosting provider for assistance. An example question you can ask your web hosting provider... "I'm trying to set up SPF and DKIM records to ensure my emails are received by the recipient, can you help me get those set up correctly?"
Make sure to check your Spam folder in case your form emails are being inadvertently delivered there.
Some web hosting providers do not allow mail to be sent via a PHP mailer unless it's authenticated (such as with SMTP authentication). RapidWeaver's built-in Contact Form does not offer outgoing mail authentication, as such if your web hosting provider blocks this type of mailing it will be necessary that you find an alternative web hosting provider that allows this type of outgoing mail, or a third party Contact Form solution that allows for outgoing mail authentication. There are several third party Contact Form addons in our Marketplace. For recommendations feel free to ask on our Community Forum!
