To create the overall form, you simply go into the backend control panel at www.yourchurchsite.com/administrator (where yourchurchsite.com is YOUR actual church domain name).
Go to components>Forms.
Click the 'new' button at the top right to create a new form.
Fill out the fields you see with your form details. On the right you will see 5 tabs (publishing, images, themes, buttons, emails)
Under the 'themes' tab, choose 'tabular.'
Under the 'emails' tab, fill out the following fields:
- Email Form: set to Yes
- From: leave blank
- To: the email you want to receive the form data
- Email Subject: what you want the subject of the email to be that contains the data the end user just sent you
- Keep all other fields as is
Click 'save' at the top right.
Now you want to add the fields for this form.
It will take you back to the page where it will list all the forms you have created. In the row of the form you just created, there will be a text link on the right called 'edit items' that you need to click on.
This is where you add your fields. Click the 'new' button at the top right.
Caption: What the label will be of the field
Acckey: You can ignore
Name: For database use only. You can use what you put as the label, but NO spaces. You wont ever see this info anyway so it doesnt matter what you name it.
Type: The type of field you want to use. If you want to collect a name, you would just use a 'text' field.
Check: You can leave empty
Help text: You can leave empty if you want. If the label of your field is not clear, this is where you would enter in text to explain in more detail what you are asking for.
Error Message: You can leave blank
Use the tabs on the right only if necessary (if the parameters for the tabs are not visible, just click on any one of the tab titles and it will show). The 'values' tab will only be necessary to use if you have chosen a 'type' radio, checkbox, or select. That is where you would type in the different values for your "radio box" etc.
Click 'save' at the top right to save your field.
To link to the form you created, you would go to the forms page where it lists all your forms, which you can get to just by going to components>forms. It will list a url next to each form you have created. Copy that url. It will look something like:
index.php?option=com_performs&formid=1
Now go to the page on your site where you want to link the form from. Open the editor for that page. Highlight the text you want to be the link to that form and click the 'insert/edit hyperlink' button in the wysiwyg editor toolbar. Paste that link into the url field BUT make sure you add a / to the beginning of the url you paste, or else it may not work properly. So the url you paste into the url field might look like
/index.php?option=com_performs&formid=1
If you want to embed the form into an existing content page:
Go to the content page you want to embed the form into and click the edit button to bring up the wysiwyg editor. Now click in the page where you want the form to go and enter in this piece of code with brackets:
{mosperforms formid=X}
where x=the number of the form you created.
If you want to save the data you receive from the form in the backend so you may later export to csv file:
In the backend, go to components>forms.
Check the box next to the form you want to save/export.
Click on the 'data' button at the top right.
The first time doing this is will give you a warning message. Click the 'binding' button at the top right.
Leave the table name as is and click 'save'
Now, when someone enters data in the form in the frontend, you can just come back here and click on the 'data' button for any form you want to see the results from. The EXPORT button will appear on the top right when viewing your data.
