This screen displays all the Pages that you have access to, except archived Pages (see All My Archived Pages). It is the combination of all other Page listings.
liveSite is a "page-based" system, meaning most of building your website is done by creating Pages, setting design styling, interactive properties, adding content, and then linking them to other Pages.
You can view and edit any Page you have access to by selecting the Page from any of the Pages screens, which are grouped by Page Type. Some of the Page's properties are also visible.
You can enter a search term in the box on this screen and search for any Page by it's properties. (Page content is excluded from the search).
You can modify the Folder, Page Style, search, and sitemap.xml options for one or more Pages by selecting the Pages you wish to modify and clicking "Modify Selected". Since access control is handled by the Page's Folder, modifying the Page allows you to easily protect a Page.
WARNING: Since changing a Page's Folder effects it's access control, you can accidentally make a Private Page accessible or a Public Page inaccessible to others attempting to view the Page. Keep this in mind when moving Pages among Folders.
WARNING: Moving a Page can also change the Page's Page Style, which could accidentally hide Page Region content and include new common content. If this happens, you can always change the Page Style back to the original Page Style and the Page Regions will reappear. Page Regions are never lost unless you delete the content or delete the Page itself.
You can easily e-mail any Page in it's native HTML-format (and text format) to a single recipient or a group of recipients, we call "Subscribers".
There are two ways to e-mail a Page:
To create a Page, click on "Create Page" or view an existing Page and click "Duplicate Page".
To comment on a Page, be sure that Comments are enabled in the Page's Properties. This will display the Comment form on the Page. If CAPTCHA is enabled in the Site Settings, then comments are protected from SPAM. Spammers use unprotected web forms in an attempt to use another's website to post and broadcast their own advertising. To combat this malicious technique, all Comment forms have a built-in CAPTCHA feature that is automatically enabled if it Comment form is displayed to any site visitor that has is not logged into the website. The CAPTCHA asks a simple challenge question that the visitor must answer correctly in order to submit the Comment.
To delete a Page, select the Page you wish to delete and click "Delete Selected". Only the Page (and it's Properties such as Custom Form or Form List/Item View Layout), Page Regions, Comments, and Comment Attachments are deleted. Menu and Ad Regions, Ads, and all other common regions and their content as well as it's Page Style remain.
If you have Advanced Site Search Type enabled in Site Settings, then liveSite spider can perform a deep search through your website Pages and Files and the resulting data (called an index) will be stored securely in liveSite's database. If Advanced Site Search is enabled, and you are a Site Manager, Site Designer, or Site Administrator, you will see the "Update Search Index" button and you can manually update the index at any time. You only need to update the search index if you think new content has been added to your website pages. (Products are searched in real-time and not stored in the index so there is no need to update the index for Product changes.) It may take several minutes to run the update for larger sites.
TIP: If you upgrade to a Pro or Elite hosting plan or purchase a software subscription, your Server Administrator can set up a Scheduled Task (called a cron job) to update the search index periodically, so that you don't have to manually update the Site Search Index.
Clicking on "show mobile" or "show desktop" will toggle the display of the Page's Page Style that will be used by the mobile detection feature to display the Page to your site visitors. If the Page Style is colored red, it means that liveSite could not find a Mobile Page Style for the Page, and it will default to use the Desktop Page Style to display the Page to mobile (phone) visitors. You should consider adding a Mobile Page Style for any Page that does not have one defined for it.
NOTE: The Delete Selected button only appears for Users that have access to delete Pages.
WARNING: Take care when deleting Pages, there is no UNDO.
A "Page" is a web page on your website that can be viewed or edited. Pages are constructed "on-the-fly" in real-time when requested from a website Visitor, and are made up of the following:
liveSite has a built-in process for create and editing content that is seamlessly integrated into every Page. While you remain logged in, you can browse through the site, Page by Page, stopping to edit content, link to content, upload photos and videos, and continue on building and updating your website, using only your web browser.
If you click the "Edit Content" button on the top right corner of a Page, any editable region found on the Page (you have access too) will be outlined with dashed lines. You can click within the outlined area and edit content right on the page.
TIP: You may use the Ctrl+E | ⌘+E keyboard shortcut to activate or deactivate edit mode.
In Edit Mode, you can click on any "Edit" button or within any dashed line area and edit the content:
Page Regions: If you are a Content Manager, you can click within the blue outlined area to edit any Page Region content using the built-in Rich-text Editor. If the Page's Page Type has interactive properties, such as a Custom Form, these properties can also be edited through the colored "Edit" buttons that appear.
Page Comments: If you are a Content Manager, you can click on the blue "Edit" buttons to edit or publish any Comments posted to the Page.
System Regions: If the Page's Page Type is not "Standard", it will possess interactive properties, and you can click on the black "Edit" button to access the page's specific page type properties:
Black dashed lines indicate a System Region's header and footer. These header and footer areas are shared among all Page that includes this System Region in their Page Styles.
Purple "Edit" buttons indicate that the content or feature is custom form related. These areas are linked to the either the custom form or form list / item view that is embedded within the Page.
Green "Edit" buttons indicate that the content or feature is e-commerce related and are linked to the e-commerce Products and Product Groups so you can edit them directly from any Page they are being displayed on.
Orange "Edit" buttons indicate that the content or feature is a calendar related and are linked to the calendars so you can edit them directly from any Page they are being displayed on.
Common Regions: If you are a Site Manager (or have been granted access to edit a specific Common Region), then you can click within any red dashed area to edit the Common Region using the built-in Rich-text Editor.
Menu Regions: If you are a Site Manager, then you can click on the red "Edit" buttons to update any Menu Region.
Designer Regions: If you are a Site Designer, you can click on the red "Edit" button to update to code within any Designer Region.
Product Group & Products: If you are a Commerce Manager, then you can click on the green "Edit" buttons on any relevant Commerce Pages to edit the Products and Product Groups directly from the Page.
When editing Page Regions and Common Regions inline, once you update the content, a green check mark for saving and a red x for cancelling will appear on the right. TIP: You may also use the Ctrl+S | ⌘+S keyboard shortcut to save updates to inline regions.
Social networking buttons, that are enabled from the feature in the site settings, will not be shown in Edit Mode in order to increase performance for the editor.
PicMonkey is a free photo editing service that will allow you to re-size, crop, colorize and clean up your website photos without leaving your websites. To use PicMonkey, be sure you are in Edit Mode, and simply hover over any image in a content area, and click on the "PicMonkey" button that appears over the image. The image must be a GIF, JPEG, or PNG, and you must have edit rights to the image's Folder in order to edit it.
PicMonkey is a Flash application, so be sure you have the proper Flash plug-in installed for your browser. PicMonkey will not work on iPad or iPhones since they don't support Flash. After the PicMonkey application loads, and a copy of your image is sent to the PicMonkey server, you can begin editing your image. If you decide not to keep your changes, you can click the "X" (close), which will cancel your changes and return you to your web page. If you decide to keep your changes, then click "Save", and you will be prompted to either "Replace" the original image on your website, or "Save a Copy" of the image, which will preserve the original image and create a new image and update your web page with the new image name. Be sure not to navigate away from the PicMonkey application screen before you save your changes, or they may be lost.
If you save a GIF in PicMonkey then a new PNG copy will be created and your web page will be updated to use the new PNG. This is necessary because PicMonkey does not currently support saving as a GIF format. Your original GIF image will remain in liveSite. Therefore, liveSite will always "Save a Copy" for GIF's regardless of whether you select "Replace" or "Save a Copy".
NOTE: Images that appear in liveSite content for Form Item View and Form List View Pages can only be replaced. A new copy of these images cannot be saved from PicMonkey. Also, the width and height for the image tag will not be updated. Also, GIF images in Form Item View and Form List View Pages may not be edited with PicMonkey.
DISCLAIMER: Be aware that the basic PicMonkey services are free but their terms are subject to change at any time. We cannot warrant their service, features, advertising, or availability. This service is provided to you AS-IS. Also, when using PicMonkey, a copy of your image is transmitted across the Internet to the PicMonkey server. We cannot encrypt nor maintain Folder security for any image once it has left the website, so please keep this in mind if you are ever editing images that may contain sensitive information.
If you click the "up arrow" button on the top right corner of your Page, the menu will roll up and disappear, allowing you to see your web page exactly as it would appear to site Visitors. Clicking the button again will pull-down the menu again, so you can access other features.
Full Screen Mode works in both Edit and View Modes.
TIP: You may use the Ctrl+D | ⌘+D keyboard shortcut to activate or deactivate full screen mode.
If you are a Site Designer, you can click on this button to edit the Page's Page Style, in order to update the layout of the Page and add/remove Regions.
If you are a Site Manager or a Site Designer, you can click on the "Theme Preview" button when viewing a Page and enter into Theme Preview Mode (TPM).
TPM is an important part of designing and redesigning your website. TPM allows you to select and overlay any Theme and Page Style on top of any Page on your website. TPM is a great way to test how different Themes and Page Style combinations affect your Pages. TPM is only active within your specific web browser session so all other Site Visitors will not see the previewed Theme and Page Style that you see. This means you can create new Theme and Page Style combinations for every Page of your website as you redesign a single Page or all Pages across your website, without changing the way the world sees your production site.
So how does TPM work? Once you go into TPM, you will see a pick list of all Themes, with the Activate Theme selected (it will have an "A" next to it to identify that it is as the currently Activated Theme for your website). Likewise, a pick list with all Page Styles will be displayed and the activated Page Style for the currently viewed Page will be selected (also with an "A" next to the name to designate that it is the Page Style associated with the Activated Theme and the Page). At this point, you can view the current Page with any Page Style and Theme by changing the pick lists. If you decide to change the Page Style for the selected Theme, you can click "Set" to bind the Page Style to the selected Theme. If you want to test another Theme or Page Style, you can enter into TPM and browse all your Pages and "Set" the selected Page Style at any time to be associated with the selected Theme (and the Page). You will see a "P" next to the Page Style name currently associated with the selected Theme.
If you are doing a redesign and want to associate new Page Styles for the currently selected Theme to many Pages at once, you can go to the All Pages view, select the checkbox next to several Pages and click the "Modify Selected" button at the bottom of the screen. If you are in TPM you will see a notice informing you that any Page Style changes will only affect the currently Previewed Theme for the Pages selected. This is great for setting all Pages for your previewed Theme to specific Page Styles when you are redesigning your site. You can then click through all your site Pages and verify that the Previewed Theme and Page Style combination for each Page is correct before you activate the a new Theme and instantly launch your new design sitewide!
You can do the same for your Mobile Page Styles as well providing you with ultimate flexibility.
Click on the "x" when viewing any Page to exit TPM.
Whether you are in TPM or not, when you Activate a Theme, all associated Page Styles for each Page are stored by liveSite for each Theme so they are recalled whenever you activate a Theme so the associations you created when you "set" a Page Style for a Page for a specific Theme are never lost. This is important behavior of TPM so that you can change your activated Theme back and forth as necessary during your development or seasonal site transformations without losing their associations.
Click this button to access the Page's properties. (You can also click on the Black "Edit" button surrounding the page's specific interactive content to reach the Page's properties.)
To create a new Page, it is faster to duplicate an existing Page. Click this button to make a copy of the current Page. Duplicating a Page also duplicates it's properties, and page content. A new name is given to the duplicated Page and you will be directed to the new page. Page Comments are not duplicated.
Click this button to create an E-mail Campaign using the Page. You must be a Campaign Manager to use this feature.
Since all Page edits are updated on the website in real-time, there are many times that you wish to make changes and preview them before making them "live" for all to see. In order to do this, we recommend that you follow this process:
You can edit any content area easily using the built-in Rich-text Editor. Much like a Word Processor, the Rich-text Editor Page allows you to add text,images, tables, links, and even embed media files. You can also style your content using Formats and Custom Formats included in System Themes or any CSS design.
To properly apply formatting to your content, click on a specific text or graphic object within the region you are editing and then apply a format (or custom format) by selecting the appropriate icon or pick list from the menu (located in the hovering menu above the region).
As soon as you have made a change in a content region, the green "save" and red "cancel" buttons will appear from the right side of the screen. You can edit any number of regions on the page (common or page regions) and once you are happy with your edits, you can click on the "save" button and all changes to all regions will be saved.
If you decide you are not happy with your edits, you can click "cancel" and your edits will be cancelled.
NOTE: If you attempt to navigate away from the page after you have started editing, a warning message will alert you. You can then either continue to leave the page (and lose your edits), or stay on the page.
To remove menu options from your content, select specific text or graphic object within the region you are editing and then select the "Remove Format" icon in the menu.
If you have trouble adding or removing formatting in your content, you can "Select All" content, and then select "Remove Format" to remove all formatting, leaving only your plain text and graphics. You can then start reapplying your formatting. With a little practice, you will get good at it!
NOTE: The Rich-text Editor takes content that you paste or add into it's editing window and creates code behind the scenes that web browsers understands. To do this, it must translate your formatting selections into HTML tags and can sometimes get "confused" when these invisible HTML tags overlap as you paste and update your content. This is not a bug in the software, but simply one invisible format tag interfering with another.
Adding a Line Break
If you want to create a line break (<br>), press "Shift-Enter".
Adding a new Paragraph
If you want to create a new paragraph (<p>), press "Enter".
Here are is an explanation of all the icon menu functions available to you within the Rich-text Editor. Many of the features are also accessible by placing the cursor at the area in the Editing area that you want to perform an action, and clicking the right mouse button.
Formats
Formats are standardized HTML tags that are used to style content. You typically want to use these first when styling your content. These standard HTML formatting tags include:
Custom Formats
Custom Formats (sometimes referred to as shortcodes in other systems) are styling elements that can be add to the Rich-text Editor to add styling your content that is consistent with your website's design. Site Designers can add and remove Custom Formats in their CSS code for special site designs. See Edit Themes for more information.
Select text color
Click this icon to change the color of your highlighted text. (This feature can be disabled in the Site Settings.)
Select background color
Click this icon to change the background color of your highlighted text. (This feature can be disabled in the Site Settings.)
Bold
Bold text content that is highlighted.
Italics
Italicize text content that is highlighted.
Underline
Underline text content that is highlighted.
Strike-through
Strike-through text content that is highlighted.
Block-quote
Apply the block-quote formatting tag to the highlighted text.
Spell Check
Spell Check the text content using the spell checker enabled for your site. Please be aware that a spell check button only appears when using the previous editor (see Site Settings). If you use the latest editor then there is no spell check button, and the spell check happens automatically using the browser's native spell check feature.
Cut
Cut content that is highlighted.
Copy
Copy content that is highlighted.
Paste
Paste content from the clipboard
Paste Text
Paste only text content from the clipboard.
Paste Word
Paste from a Microsoft Office document in the clipboard and strip out hidden MS Word formatting tags.
Select All
Click this icon to select all content (and invisible formatting tags) within the Editor Window. This is useful if you want to copy everything in the Editor to your clipboard and then paste it into another editable area.
New Document
Click this icon will clear all the content within the Editor Window. This is useful if you want to clear all the content in the Editor and start over. It will also clear any invisible formatting tags that might be present.
Subscript
Subscript text content that is highlighted.
Superscript
Superscript text content that is highlighted.
Justify Left
Justify all content to the left of the editable area.
Justify Center
Justify all content to the center of the editable area.
Justify Right
Justify all content to the right of the editable area.
Justify All
Justify all content to the left and the right of the editable area.
Create Bulleted List
Creates a regular bullet list.
Create Numbered List
Allows you to create a list ordered by numbers.
Indent
Indent the content.
Horizontal Rule
Adds a horizontal separator line beneath your content. TIP: This is a good way to create separation between areas of content.
Add Link
This button allows you to create a HTML link to any other Web page in liveSite or to an external Website. You can also upload a document file using this button and liveSite will automatically create a link to the File.
To create a link to an e-mail address, select the link button but instead of selecting a Page or URL, enter " " in the URL field. Email links will automatically be protected from e-mail harvesters, which are bots that crawl the web and collect e-mail addresses for spam. The e-mail link that you create will be converted to JavaScript automatically when a Visitor visits a Page. This prevents e-mail harvesters from finding the e-mail address. An e-mail address must be linked with a mailto link in order for the e-mail address to be protected. An e-mail address which just appears in content, without a link, will not be protected. Email links which are entered through other areas of liveSite (e.g. Custom Page Styles, Designer Regions) will also be protected.
You may use the Popup tab to create a JavaScript pop-up window. You might want to use this feature instead of simply opening a new window via the Target field if you want to set the properties for the new window (e.g. size, scroll bars). Please do not enter a Window name, unless you are specifically directing the link to an existing pop-up window, because it might not work in Internet Explorer.
Remove Link
Removes the HTML link from the content.
Create Anchor
Create an link to an area within the Page. This is useful when you need to help the site visitor navigate around a large page of content.
Insert Image
This button allows you to insert a graphic image into your content. You can select any file already uploaded (see the Files Tab for more information on these Files) or upload a new image file from your computer. All uploads are available on any other page you create. Valid image files will have a .tiff, .png, .jpg, or .gif extension to be visible on your Website. .jpg are best for photos, and .gif is best for simple logos.
Insert Media
This button allows you to insert media into your Page Region. You can select any file already uploaded (see the Files Tab for more information on these Files) or upload a new media file from your computer. All uploads are available on any other page you create.
NOTE: If you are having problems rendering your embedded media, edit the media's Properties and use the actual URL (e.g. /[dir]/get_file.php?name=example.mp3) instead of the virtual URL (e.g. /example.mp3). We are not sure why the rewriting of the URLs matters, but it appears that a small percentage of client computers don't like the virtual URLs, probably because of some unrelated compatibility issue that has not been identified.
If that does not work, you should also consider adding a URL parameter to your media's Properties as follows, since there seems to be an issue for some versions of the Internet Explorer browser:
...
Be sure to also replace the virtual URL with the actual URL as described above.
Table Properties
You can edit several of the tables properties including alignment, size, rules, borders and specific styles. This is an advanced feature. You can learn more about tables at:
Row Properties
Change one row including size, alignment and different styles.
Cell Properties
Changes a specific cell's size, alignment, or you can add styles.
Cell Merge
Allows you to put content in multiple cells. For instance if you have a header that you need to center over three columns, you would merge the three cells together.
Table Modifications
You can insert and delete columns, rows or cells.
Insert Table
Using the insert table button you can choose the number of rows and columns and the width of the table. You can also configure a default alignment, border, cell spacing and cell padding.
Insert Character
Insert special characters into the content that are not typically available on standard keyboards.
Remove Formatting
Highlight or select the content area you wish to clean, and click the Format Scrubber menu button. This button removes any text formatting (in case you need to clean the text and reapply your formatting). Very useful when copying and pasting content from other Websites.
Cleanup
Highlight the content area you wish to clean, and click the MS Word Format Scrubber menu button. Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Excel add HTML formatting tags (you can see them in the content) that mess up the formatting of Pages. This button removes these formatting tags.
Search
Search the content for a keyword.
Search and Replace
Search the content for a keyword and then replace it with another.
Undo
Undo the last modification within the Window. NOTE: Once you "Save" the content, the content changes cannot be undone.
Redo
Redo the last Undo within the Window. NOTE: Once you "Save" the content, the content changes cannot be redone.
Full Screen Mode
Enlarge/reduce the Rich-text Editing area to fill the browser window.
HTML Code View Mode
View the HTML code that is producing the Page Region. TIP: If you have basic knowledge of HTML, you will find this mode useful to add and modify more complex HTML tags.
The primary function of the Rich-text Editor is to contain content (text and grahics) and hyperlinks, but most javascript and even iframes are allowed by the Rich-text Editor. However, to prevent you website from being hacked, other code is not allowed and will be removed automatically when the Rich-text Editor is closed and saves content. If you are curious as to what code is allowed, we recommend you test this by adding your code and saving. Then reopen the Rich-text Editor and inspect your code to see if it remained intact.
Also, you cannot run PHP code from within the Rich-text Editor, nor can you embed other system tags or regions within the Rich-text Editor.
You can create dialog windows that pop up and float on top of your pages. This allows you to add content to a page without sacrificing screen real estate.
To create a dialog window, first, insert a link and then enter a Link URL or select a Page or File for the content that you want to appear in the dialog window. This is a fall-back link in case the Visitor does not have JavaScript enabled. This is important for search engine optimization. If you do not care about a fall-back link, then you may enter "#" for the Link URL. Second, add the following code to the onclick field under the Events tab.
software.open_dialog({url: '/example?edit=no', width: 700, height: 600, modal: true, title: 'Title Goes Here'}); return false;
Where:
url: should be set to something like /example or http://www.example.com. (Please note that you should actually enter "/". The software will replace it with the correct path automatically, so we recommend that you don't enter your actual path.) The ?edit=no parameter on the end of the url is optional, and will prevent the control panel itself from being displayed inside the dialog window when it is opened (if a Site Editor is logged in when viewing the dialog window.)
width: width of the dialog window. You may omit this property in order to use the default value, which is 75% of the browser width. Also, this property will be ignored and the default value will always be used when a Visitor is in mobile mode.
height: height of the dialog window. You may omit this property in order to use the default value, which is 75% of the browser height. Also, this property will be ignored and the default value will always be used when a Visitor is in mobile mode.
modal: A value of "true" will shade the rest of the screen behind the modal window and prevent the Visitor from interacting with the rest of the screen while the dialog window is open. You may enter "false" for a standard dialog window. The default is "true".
title: The title to be displayed in the title bar at the top of the dialog window. This is blank by default.
return false; Be sure to include this at the end so the browser will understand that a dialog window is being opened for the link, and that the link should not be opened in the parent window.
This screen allows a comment to be edited, deleted, or published by the Page's Moderator at any time.
Publish:
A Moderator may publish a Comment to make the Display Name and Comment visible to all Visitors to the Page. There are 3 different publish options.
This option allows the Moderator to publish the Comment now.
This option allows the Moderator to select a date & time in the future when the Comment should be automatically published. For example, you might send an automated reminder to a customer, 1 hour before a meeting, in a private conversation.
The Moderator may also select that the scheduled Comment should not be automatically published, if a new, different Comment is added first. This is normally desired because if someone else adds a published Comment before the scheduled Comment is published, then the scheduled Comment may no longer be relevant to the conversation.
Scheduled Comments require that the General Job be enabled. Your server admin can add a cron job/scheduled task for the General Job to run every 5 minutes. The General Job should be set to run the "job.php" script in the software directory.
This option allows the Moderator to unpublish the Comment.
NOTE: Only Content Managers with edit rights to the Page can see unpublished Comments.
This screen displays the Page Properties which define the name of the Page and the interactive features of the Page.
NOTE: If you are creating a new Page, only the basic Page Properties are required. All other Page Properties are hidden, but are visible once the Page has been created.
Select "Default" to inherit the value from this Page's Parent Folder. Otherwise, select one of the Desktop Page Styles that have been created by the Site Designers.
NOTE: Desktop Page Styles are any System Page Style that is NOT a "Mobile One Column" Page Style (or a Custom Page Style that does not have one_column_mobile CSS class assigned to it's HTML <body> tag.)
Layout Type:
If you want to change the presentation logic and/or HTML code for liveSite region, you can select "Custom" for the Layout Type. For example, if you need to add some CSS classes to elements on the My Account Page, in order to add unique styling, a "Custom" Layout Type allows you to do that. Once you select "Custom" and save, then an "Edit Layout" button will appear in the button bar of this screen. The "Edit Layout" button will take you to the Page Designer where you can edit the custom layout.
A default custom layout will appear to help you get started. You can edit that custom layout as desired. You can include PHP code in your custom layout to customize the presentation logic. If you ever want to start over with the default custom layout, then you can find a "Generate Layout" button in the button bar on the Edit Page Properties screen. You can copy code from there and paste into your custom layout.
There are a few page types that do not support custom layouts. The Layout Type option will not appear for them.
Only Administrators and Designers have the ability to set the Layout Type and update custom layouts.
If you don't want to change liveSite region presentation logic and/or HTML code then you should select "System".
Promote on Keyword:
If you want this Page to appear at the top of a Search Results Page, in a special "featured" area, separate from the general results, when a visitor searches for a specific keyword, then enter that keyword here. For example, if you want the "contact-us" page for your site to appear at the top of the search results, when a visitors searches for "contact", then you can enter "contact" in this field. This feature is useful if you want to promote important pages to the top of the search results for common searches. This feature is not case-sensitive, so you may use either lowercase or uppercase letters.
This feature has different requirements and behavior depending on the Site Search Type, set in the Site Settings. Please see differences below.
For simple site search, you should just enter one keyword or keyword phrase. For example, enter "contact" or "contact us". Multiple keywords, separated by commas, are not supported for this site search type. In order for this page to be promoted, the visitor's search will have to match the complete keyword or keyword phrase exactly. For example, if you enter "contact us" and the visitor searches for "contact", this page will not be promoted.
For advanced site search, you may enter multiple keywords or keyword phrases, separated by commas. For example, you can enter "contact us, address, phone". The search will match on any complete word. For example, if you enter "contact us" and the visitor searches for "contact", this page will be promoted.
The search engine for this feature is powered by the same engine as the general advanced search, so many of the same rules apply. For example, results are ordered by relevancy, stop and short words are ignored, and etc. Please see Search Results for more info.
If there are multiple Pages that contain the same keyword and you want to control the order of the Pages in the results, then you can enter a keyword multiple times to increase the relevancy of a Page. For example, let's say that you have a "phone" keyword for both the contact-us and staff-directory Pages, but you want the contact-us Page to be listed first in the results for "phone", you can enter "phone" multiple times for the contact-us Page, like below (notice how "phone" is repeated).
phone, contact us, address, phone
Please note that the repeated keyword cannot appear multiple times in a row. The search will ignore repeated words in a row, when determining relevancy. For example, don't do the following.
phone, phone
If you have no other keywords to separate the repeated keywords then you can use a solution like the one below to increase relevancy.
repeat1 phone, repeat2 phone, repeat3 phone
In this example, we have used "repeat1", "repeat2", and "repeat3" as separation keywords. These are keywords that are unlikely that a visitor will search for, so it is safe to use them for separation. We use a number on the end of the separation keyword so that it is unique, so the search will not ignore the repetition.
After you update keywords, the search index will need to be updated, in order for Visitor search results to be affected. Normally, this is done automatically, on a schedule, by the Update Search Index Job, however you can update the search index manually via the Pages tab.
For advanced site search, there is an additional way that you can set keywords for any Page. You may add an HTML tag, anywhere in the content, with a "promote-on-keyword" class, and then include a list of the keywords inside the tag. When liveSite updates the search index, it will find the keywords in the tag and update the index accordingly. Please see the example code below.
contact us, address, phone
You may use any HTML tag that you desire. For example, a "div" works also.
contact us, address, phoneYou may include other classes in the class attribute, if you want to style the tag in certain ways.
contact us, address, phone
Please don't include other HTML tags inside the list of keywords. For example, the following will NOT work properly.
contact us, address, phone
If you don't want visitors to see the keywords, then you may use CSS to hide the tag. For example, the code below will hide the keywords for all regular visitors, but will show the keywords for editors and add some styling around the keywords.
.promote-on-keyword {
display: none;
}
.edit_mode .promote-on-keyword,
.cke .promote-on-keyword,
.cke_editable .promote-on-keyword,
.cke_panel_listItem .promote-on-keyword {
display: block;
padding: 1em;
margin: 1em 0;
border: 2px solid orange;
}
The benefit of the "promote-on-keyword" class is that you can include keywords for Submitted Forms on a Form Item View, and Calendar Events on a Calendar Event View. For example, let's say you have one blog article (i.e. a Submitted Form) about a holiday party for your organization, and you want that blog article to be promoted in the search results when a visitor searches for "holiday party", you could include those keywords inside an HTML tag, somewhere in the content of that article.
For a Submitted Form, you can include keywords inside the data of a rich-text editor field, or create a dedicated keywords field that you include in the layout of the Form Item View.
For Calendar Events, you can include the keywords in the full description field.
You may add the "promote-on-keyword" class to your list of custom formats in your theme, if you would like it to appear in the Custom Formats pick list in the rich-text editor. Please see Edit Theme for more info.
You may include multiple tags with the "promote-on-keyword" class, with different sets of keywords on one Page. When the index is updated, all of the keywords from all tags will be combined together.
You may set keywords directly in the Promote on Keyword field in the Page properties, and also include keywords in an HTML tag with a "promote-on-keyword" class. When the index is updated, all of the keywords, from all sources, will be combined together.
The Title and Description fields are also used by the Site Search feature and displayed on Search Results Page.
The Title is used as the e-mail Subject field when the auto-responder feature is used to send the Page after an action has occurred.
For Form Item View Pages, you can output a dynamic title and description for each Submitted Form, by editing the title and description fields in the Custom Form and then setting the "RSS / Search Element" field appropriately. If you set that up and a Submitted Form has a value for the title or description then the corresponding field in these Page properties will be ignored.NOTES:
The Comments feature adds online community-building functionality to any Page on your site. Comments allow Visitors and Users to interact with your site. If Comments are enabled for a Page, then anyone who can view a Page can leave a Comment (and therefore become a Contributor), and read any published Comments from other Contributors. Comments can be automatically published, or the Page's Moderator (a User with edit rights to the Page), can be alerted via e-mail to new Comments with a link to instantly edit, delete or publish the Comment.
When a Moderator adds a Comment, he/she will be presented with 3 different publish options.
This option allows the Moderator to publish the Comment instantly, when it is added.
This option allows the Moderator to select a date & time in the future when the Comment should be automatically published. For example, you might send an automated reminder to a customer, 1 hour before a meeting, in a private conversation.
The Moderator may also select that the scheduled Comment should not be automatically published, if a new, different Comment is added first. This is normally desired because if someone else adds a published Comment before the scheduled Comment is published, then the scheduled Comment may no longer be relevant to the conversation.
Scheduled Comments require that the General Job be enabled. Your server admin can add a cron job/scheduled task for the General Job to run every 5 minutes. The General Job should be set to run the "job.php" script in the software directory.
This option allows the Moderator to add the Comment now, but wait and publish it manually, later.
NOTE: Comments are tied directly to a Page. However, some Pages, depending on their Page Type, display dynamic items, so their Comments are tied to both the Page and the dynamic item. This is transparent to the Visitors, but worth mentioning as you are deciding which Pages you should enable Comments for. Pages with the following Page Types display dynamic items: Catalog, Catalog Detail, Form Item View, and Calendar Event View.
If you are setting up a conversation or support ticket system for customers then you will setup one Form List View that lists each conversation/ticket and then one Form Item View that shows the detail for each conversation/ticket. For this situation, it is important to understand that Comments should only be enabled for the Form Item View, and not the Form List View. The reason for this is because if a customer adds a Comment to a Form List View, then other customers will be able to see that same Comment.
NOTE: If CAPTCHA is enabled in the Site Settings and if a visitor is not logged in and the Page has either a Public or Guest Access Control Type, then a Captcha field will automatically be displayed in the Add Comment area of the Page. The Captcha field is a randomly generated question that must be answered before the Comment can be added. This is to protect the Comments feature from being spammed.
IMPORTANT: To display comments, a System Region or <system><system> tag must appear in the Page Style assigned to the Page. The Site Designer can add this tag if necessary.
Comment Label:
Enter the text label that you want to use to describe a Comment to a Visitor for this Page. For example, if you are using Comments for Product reviews, then you might enter "Review", so that the add Comment button says "Add Review" instead of "Add Comment". This label will be used in multiple locations where the word "Comment" would normally appear. The default label is "Comment".
The label should be a noun, in singular form (e.g. "Review). Do not enter the plural form (e.g. "Reviews"). The label will be automatically pluralized when necessary. Avoid using a label that can't be pluralized properly (e.g. "2 Feedbacks"). The label may contain multiple words (e.g. "Product Review"). You may capitalize as desired. The capitalization will normally be preserved, however the label will be automatically lower-cased when it appears in a sentence.
You should only use a label that works well after the "a" article (e.g. "...when a review is added."). For example, don't use a label, like "Announcement" because it won't be correct (e.g. "...when a announcement is added.").
Notification emails about new Comments will also contain this label. However, the Edit Comment screen that moderators use in the control panel to edit & publish Comments will always use "Comment" for the label.
[[His name is ^^name^^||He did not include his name.]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
This feature only applies to Form Item View Pages. Check this box if you want to use the same conditional e-mail notification of administrators to occur that were notified initially when this Page's Custom Form was submitted. Since some Custom Form fields can notify different administrators (or conditiional administrators), you may want the same adminitrators notified when new Comments are added.
TIP: This feature is useful when you want to set up a single Custom Form to manage requests for several internal groups. Each time a Comment (i.e. response) is added to the Custom Form Item View Page, only the proper group selected in original Submitted Form would be notified.
This feature only applies to Form Item View Pages. Whenever a Comment is published this will send the original Custom Form submitter a notification e-mail informing him/her that a new Comment has been published to his/her Submitted Form.
When trying to determine the Submitter's e-mail address, liveSite will first look for an e-mail address in a Form Field that is connected to the Contact e-mail address field. If it can't find one there, then if the Submitter was logged in as a User when the form was submitted, then it will use the User's email address. If the Submitter was not logged in as a User, then it will look for an e-mail address in a Form Field which has an e-mail address type, but only if there is just one Form Field with an e-mail address type.
If liveSite cannot find an e-mail address for the Submitter, then an e-mail will not be sent.
TIP: This feature is useful for a support ticket system where the person who originally submitted the ticket (i.e. submitted form) needs to be notified when someone replies to their ticket (i.e. adds a Comment).
NOTE: The "From" address for this e-mail notification will be set to the From E-mail Address page type property for the Custom Form. If that field has no value, then the Support E-mail Address from the Site Settings will be used.
[[His name is ^^name^^||He did not include his name.]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
When a Page is selected (below), Users will be allowed to add themselves to the Watcher List for this Page, so that they will be notified via e-mail when a Comment is published. This feature allows Watchers to easily track conversations for certain submitted forms. A Visitor must be logged in as a User in order to add or remove themselves from the Watch List (through a Form Item View Page).
NOTE: The "From" address for this e-mail notification will be set to the Support E-mail Address from the Site Settings.
If this Page is a Form Item View and there is a Form Editor for the Submitted Form, then the Form Editor will be included in the list of Watchers, because he/she will receive the moderator e-mail when a Comment is added. Only Users with edit access to this Page and the Form Editor him/herself will be able to see the Form Editor in the Watcher list. You cannot remove the Form Editor from the Watcher list in the same way that you remove standard Watchers. If you need to remove the Form Editor, then you will need to edit the Submitted Form.
If this Page is a Form Item View and it is set to notify the Custom Form submitter, then the Custom Form submitter will be included in the list of Watchers. Only Users with access to manage Watchers on this Page will be able to see the Custom Form submitter in the Watcher List. This includes Users with edit access to this Page, the Form Editor (if one exists), and the Custom Form submitter him/herself (if "allow submitter to manage watchers" is checked). You cannot remove the Custom Form submitter from the Watcher list.
NOTE: The "Notify me when a comment is added." check box will only appear for Users that are not already notified about new Comments via a different method (e.g. moderator email).
[[Subject is ^^subject^^||There is no subject]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
When a Page is deleted, a warning message is displayed, and if "Continue" is selected, the Page, its Page Region content, and all of its Comments will be deleted from liveSite's database.
TIP: If you might want to archive the Page Region content, we recommend that you place the Page in a Private Folder (so no one can view or edit it) instead of deleting it.
NOTE: When a Page is deleted, only the Page Regions and Comments are deleted. Any Common Regions, Page Style, Page Type, etc., are NOT deleted. The Page, its Page Regions, and its Comments are gone!
NOTE: The delete button only appears for Users that have access to delete Pages.
WARNING: Be careful because there is no undelete!
The Folder View Page will list Folders, Pages (which are included in site search), and Files that are inside of the same Folder as the Folder View Page and that the Visitor has access to. This Page Type is useful when you want to give your Visitors or Users a dynamic list of the content that they have access to. For example, you might want to use this Page Type for an intranet that shows private Pages that a User has access to.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
The Folder View will include a link to the User's start Page at the top, if one exist and if the start Page is not the same as the Folder View Page.
The Folder View does not just show the items directly under the Page's folder; it also digs deep into child Folders in order to show all items. The Folder View will only show items that the Visitor has access to. The Visitor must be logged in in order to see Private or Membership items. Registration and Guest items will be shown, even if the Visitor is not logged in. Once the Visitor clicks on a Registration or Guest item, then he/she will be asked to login or register.
The Folder View does not show the following items:
If Files are selected to be included, then Design Files will also be included.
Folders are listed in order by their sort order property. Pages and Files are listed in alphabetical order, with Pages being listed above Files.
If a Page has a web browser title, then that will be used for the link label. Otherwise, the Page name is used. If a web browser description exists then the description will be included below the link. For Files, the File name is always used for the link label. If a File has a description, then the description will be included below the link.
The name of a Folder, that a Visitor does not have view access to, might still be shown if the Folder contains a child Folder that the Visitor does have view access to. The Folder View works this way in order to preserve hierarchy and indentation. Pages and Files directly under the Folder are not shown (only the Folder name appears), so this does not cause a security issue.
The Photo Gallery Page will create proportional thumbnail images to your specifications for all "Albums" and "Photos" that are inside of the same Folder as the Photo Gallery Page.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
TIP: If you are using a digital camera, consider resizing the original image files rather than relying on the Thumbnail Max Size property to adjust the size of your images to fit the Page. This will also help your Photo Gallery Page to load faster.
Photo Gallery Pages display all "Albums" and "Photos" found in the same Folder as the Page itself.
If a Folder is inside of the Photo Gallery Page's Folder, and if it contains at least one "Photo", then the Folder is considered an "Album" and it will be displayed on the Photo Gallery Page. The viewer can then click on the "Album" to view all of the "Albums" and "Photos" inside of it.
A Photo Gallery Page will display all of the web-safe image files (.jpg, .gif, .tif, .png) that are found in the same Folder. Each image file is displayed in alphabetical order.
TIP: You can create unlimited Photo Galleries and control both the view access and edit access to them very easily by using Folders to secure your Pages and Files.
To setup a Photo Gallery:
1) Create a Folder for your Photo Gallery. You can also create sub-Folders within the Photo Gallery Page's Folder to be displayed as "Albums".
2) Create a Photo Gallery Page and place it in the Folder.
3) Upload your photos into the same Folder as the Photo Gallery Page. If you are wanting to create "Albums" then you will need to repeat this step for each "Album" within the Photo Gallery Page's Folder.
4) View your Photo Gallery and adjust as necessary by editing it's Page Properties.
Securing your Photo Gallery:
1) Make sure that the Folder containing the Photo Gallery is either Membership or Private, depending on your intended audience. This will make the gallery only visible to these Users. If you select Private, you will also need to grant "view" rights to any Users that you wish to show the Photo Gallery too.
2) If you want to allow someone else to edit the Photo Gallery, grant them "edit" rights to the Folder.
The Search Results Page Type displays search results from Pages, Comments, Submitted Forms & Views, Products, Calendars & Events, and even content from within Files linked or attached to website pages.
There are two types of Site Search: Simple and Advanced. Each have their benefits. Here is a chart that compares each Site Search Type. You can select the method best for you in your Site Settings. Simple Site Search is enabled by default.
Here are the Search Results Page Type Page Properties available:
This Page Type displays all published Calendar Events from one or more Calendars. Calendars can be displayed by default in either month-at-a-glance, or a weekly listing format. The site Visitor can also pick the format, and view a single Calendar or overlay all Calendars specified in the Calendar View Page.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
Calendar Event View Page Type displays the details for a single Calendar Event. This Page must be displayed by clicking on the links generated by a Calendar View Page.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
Calendar Item View Page visitors can export calendar events to their desktop calendar application such as Microsoft Outlook. On every Calendar Event View Page there will be an "iCalendar" link, and when clicked it will download an ICS file to their local computer and import this ICS file into their desktop calendar application.
Custom Form Page Types allow you to create and collect custom forms like: event registrations, product registrations, surveys, sales and support inquiries, request forms, and many others.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
Form Name:
The is the unique name of the Custom Form that is embedded in the Page. It is used to identify the form's data captured and accessible in the [FORMS] area, and to connect the optional Custom Form Confirmation Page.
NOTE: The Form Name can be changed at any time as long as you have deleted all submitted form data associated with the Custom Form.
Enable Form:
Select this when you want the Custom Form to collect submitted data. If this is not selected, the Custom Form and it's submit button will not appear within the Page.
Label Column Width:
This optional setting adjusts the horizontal width (in percent) of the label column within the Custom Form area of the Page. Use this setting to improve your form's layout.
Enable Watcher Option:
This optional setting will allow Users to add themselves to the watch list for the Page where Visitors might comment on the Submitted Form. You should select the Form Item View Page where the Submitted Form will appear and where Comments and watching are enabled.
TIP: This feature is often used for a forum where the User who submits a thread might want to be notified about all replies to that thread.
NOTE: The "Notify me when a comment is added." check box will only appear for Users that are not already notified about new Comments via a different method (e.g. moderator email).
Enable Save-for-Later:
The save-for-later feature allows a visitor to save a partial form and then come back later to finish it. This is normally used for large forms where the visitor might not complete the form in one sitting.
When this feature is enabled a new button with a "Save for Later" label will appear at the bottom of the Custom Form. The visitor can click that button to save an incomplete form or can click the standard submit button to complete the form. If you enable this feature, it is recommended that you use "Complete" for the Submit Button Label.
If the visitor clicks the "Save for Later" button then an incomplete Submitted Form is created and will appear under the Forms tab and be available to appear on Form List/Item Views. Custom Form actions, including E-mail Submitter, E-mail Administrator, and Auto Campaigns, will not be completed at this point in time because the form is incomplete.
You may setup a Form List View and Form Item View that the visitor can access in the future, in order to complete his/her form. The submitter is always allowed to edit his/her incomplete Submitted Forms on a Form Item View. Once the submitter clicks the "Complete" button, while editing the Submitted Form, then the Submitted Form will be marked as complete and the submitter will no longer be able to edit the form, unless the page properties for the Form Item View are setup to allow that.
Once the submitter clicks the "Complete" button, the Custom Form actions, including E-mail Submitter, E-mail Administrator, and Auto Campaigns, will be completed at this point in time. Other Custom Form actions, including Auto-Registration, Add to Contact Group, Grant Membership Trial, Grant Private Access, and Grant Offer, are not currently supported by the save-for-later feature.
It is recommended that the Custom Form and the Form List/Item Views have an access control that requires the visitor to login first (e.g. Registration access control), so that liveSite will remember who the Submitter was and allow the Submitter to edit the Submitted Form later.
Submit Button Label:
Enter the text you wish to display for the clickable Submit button.
Enable Auto-Registration:
The auto-registration feature allows a Visitor to be automatically registered when he/she submits a custom form, without being taken to a separate login/register Page. Traditionally, you might have placed your custom form Page in a Folder with registration access control. When the Visitor attempted to access the custom form, he/she would then be taken to the registration entrance Page where he/she could login to an existing User account or register to create a new User account.
On the other hand, with auto-registration, you should place your custom form Page in a Folder with public access control. Then, the Visitor is never asked to login/register. Once the custom form is submitted, if the Visitor is not logged in, then liveSite checks the email address that was entered by the Visitor. If a User does not exist for the email address, then a new User account is automatically created for the Visitor and the Submitted Form is connected to that User. The new account information, including a temporary password, is included on the confirmation Page & emails, so the User can login in the future. If a User already exists for the email address, then the Submitted Form is connected to that User, so the User can view the Submitted Form in his/her account.
If a User is created, then a unique username is automatically generated, based on the first part of the email address before the "@" symbol. When necessary, numbers are added on the end of the username for uniqueness. Also, the User's Contact is added to the registration Contact Group from the site settings. The User is automatically logged in after the custom form is submitted.
In order to determine the submitter's email address, liveSite will first look for a Field where "Connect to Contact" is set to "E-mail Address". If it does not find a Field like that, then it will look for a single Field with an "E-mail Address" type (but not if there are multiple fields like that). If a Field is not found, then auto-registration will be disabled. You will likely want to mark the email address field as required.
If you want the new account information, including the temporary password, to appear in the confirmation emails and/or the confirmation next Page, then the selected Page must have a custom form confirmation or form item view Page type. The new account information is also included automatically for plain-text emails.
You can pass "connect_to_contact=false" in the query string, if you want to submit a custom form on behalf of someone else, and you want this feature to ignore the fact that you are logged in. liveSite will then behave as if you are logged out, and will search for an existing User that matches the email address and create a new User if one is not found. You can find more info about "connect_to_contact=false" further below.
A similar auto-registration feature exists for online ordering via the order preview & express order Page types.
Hook Code:
You can use this field to enter PHP code that you want to execute when the Custom Form is submitted. This is useful if you have custom processes that need to happen once a Custom Form is submitted. The code is executed after liveSite's field validation, but before the Submitted Form is saved.
In order to use this feature this site must have an Elite hosting plan or software subscription and your User role must be Administrator or Designer. Also, your site administrator must enable PHP regions by adding the following to the config.php file. If you can see this field, then PHP regions are already enabled.
define('PHP_REGIONS', true);
You may enter the opening tags in this field, however they are not required.
DISCLAIMER: Hook code can create security and stability issues for your website. We are not responsible in any way for the results of any code that is executed within your web space. Be extremely careful with this feature. You can accidentally destroy your website database, software, files, and configuration!!!
E-mail Submitter:
Select this if you want to send an auto-responder e-mail to any Visitor that submits this Custom Form.
When trying to determine the Submitter's e-mail address, liveSite will first look for an e-mail address in a Form Field that is connected to the Contact e-mail address field. If it can't find one there, then if the Submitter is logged in as a User, then it will use the User's email address. If the Submitter is not logged in as a User, then it will look for an e-mail address in a Form Field which has an e-mail address type, but only if there is just one Form Field with an e-mail address type.
If liveSite cannot find an e-mail address for the Submitter, then an e-mail will not be sent. The from name for the e-mail will be set to the organization name in the site settings.
From E-mail Address:
Specify the e-mail address that should appear as the from address in the e-mail. If this field is left blank, then the support e-mail address from the site settings will be used.
Subject:
Specify the subject for the e-mail that is sent to the Submitter.
You may include the name of a field (^^example^^) that is in this Custom Form in order to create a dynamic subject that contains submitted form data. Example: ^^name^^, we have received your request.
You may use the following format to output different content depending on whether there is a value or not:
[[There is a value: ^^example^^|| There is not a value]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
Specify the body content for the e-mail that is sent to the Submitter.
You may include the name of a field (^^example^^) that is in this Custom Form in order to create a dynamic body that contains submitted form data. Example: ^^name^^, we have received your request.
You may use the following format to output different content depending on whether there is a value or not:
[[There is a value: ^^example^^|| There is not a value]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
Page:
If you select HTML for the format, this field allows you to select an HTML Page to be e-mailed to the Submitter.
NOTE: If a Form Item View Page is selected to be e-mailed, then the Form Item View Page will be sent with the submitted data from this Custom Form in it.
Select this when you want to notify an administrator every time this Custom Form is submitted by a Visitor. This feature is used to send notifications to those coordinating activities around the form information.
The from name will be set to the organization name in the site settings and the from address will be set to the support e-mail address in the site settings. The from name and address is not set the submitter's info in order to prevent mail providers from blocking the email. However, if a submitter address can be found (i.e. there is a connect-to-contact email address field or just one email address field), then the reply-to will be set to the submitter's address.
To E-mail Address:
This is the e-mail address that you wish to send the e-mail message to when the Custom Form is successfully submitted.
TIP: If you need to notify more than one person, you may create a forwarding email address that forwards to multiple addresses, and enter that forwarding address here.
NOTE: If the Custom Form submitter selects a field option that is set to notify an administrator, then the e-mail will also be sent to that administrator.
This is the e-mail address that you wish to BCC the e-mail message to when the Custom Form is successfully submitted.
TIP: If you need to notify more than one person, you may create a forwarding email address that forwards to multiple addresses, and enter that forwarding address here.
Subject:
Specify the subject of the e-mail that is sent to the Form Administrator.
You may include the name of a field (^^example^^) that is in this Custom Form in order to create a dynamic subject that contains submitted form data. Example: You received a message from ^^name^^.
You may use the following format to output different content depending on whether there is a value or not:
[[There is a value: ^^example^^|| There is not a value]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
Specify the body content for the e-mail that is sent to the administrator.
You may include the name of a field (^^example^^) that is in this Custom Form in order to create a dynamic body that contains submitted form data. Example: You received a message from ^^name^^.
You may use the following format to output different content depending on whether there is a value or not:
[[There is a value: ^^example^^|| There is not a value]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format must be a PHP date format.
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Example:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
Page:
If you select HTML for the format, this field allows you to select any Page to be e-mailed automatically to the Form's Administrator when a form is successfully submitted.
NOTE: If a Form Item View Page is selected to be e-mailed, then the Form Item View Page will be sent with the submitted data from this Custom Form in it.
Add to Contact Group:
If there is a contact for the visitor that submits the custom form, then the contact will be added to this contact group.
Grant Membership Trial:
Select this option if you want to grant a membership trial to the User that submits the Custom Form. If a membership trial is granted to a User, then the Contact's Member ID is set to the Reference Code for the Submitted Form, the Contact's Expiration Date is set according to the Trial Length field below, and the Contact is added to the membership Contact Group, which is set in the settings. If auto-registration is disabled, a Visitor is required to login or register in order to submit a Custom Form that grants a membership trial.
A User is not allowed to submit a Custom Form that grants a membership trial if the User's Contact already has a Member ID. This prevents Users, whose membership has expired (e.g. previous trial Members), from obtaining a new membership trial.
Trial Length:
Enter the number of days that each User should be granted membership access. If you want to grant a membership trial, then the value of this field must be greater than 0.
Set Member's Start Page to:
If you also want to update the Member's Start Page, so that the Member is forwarded to a specific Page when he/she logs in, then you should select a page for this field. You may leave this field blank. It is not required in order to grant a membership trial.
Grant Private Access:
If you want to grant "view" access to the contents of a Private Folder to the User when they submit this Custom Form, check this box. If auto-registration is disabled, a Visitor is required to login or register in order to submit a Custom Form that grants private access. This feature does allow a User to submit the Custom Form multiple times to re-enable/extend his/her private access, however you can prevent this via the "If User has already submitted form in the past, then show:" feature further below.
Set "View" Access to Folder:
Specify the Private Folder where all of the restricted Pages and Files reside that you want the User to be able to view.
Length:
Enter the number of days of private access that should be granted to the User. You can leave this field blank if you do not want the access to expire.
When the User submits the Custom Form, an expiration date will be calculated, which is the number of days after the date that the User submits the Custom Form. The expiration date can be managed in the User record. A User's existing access length will never be reduced by this feature. For example, if a User already has indefinite access, then the User's indefinite access will be preserved (i.e. no expiration date will be set). Also, if a User's existing expiration date is further in the future than the new calculated expiration date, then the expiration date will not be updated.
Set User's Start Page to:
You can also specify/update the User's "Start Page" when this Custom Form is submitted, sending the User to a specific Page each time they login to the website. This is an optional field.
TIP: You might use this to send your Users to a private home page each time they return to your website and login.
NOTE: You can update the User's Start Page at any time, by updating their User account.
Grant Offer:
If you want to create a single-use Key Code (that is connected to an Offer) for a customer when he/she submits this form, then check this field. For example, you might want to give a customer an offer (e.g. $10 off an Order) when they join your mailing list by submitting a Custom Form.
If the submitter is eligible then a Key Code will be created that is connected to the Offer that you select. The Key Code will be set to the reference code for the Submitted Form (10-character alphanumeric code).
In order to deliver the Key Code to the submitter, you need to add an email address field to the Custom Form. You can include a ^^key_code^^ mail-merge field in the submitter and admin email (in the subject and/or body). You can also use a conditional like the following to show different content based on whether the submitter was eligible or not: [[You were eligible. Code: ^^key_code^^||Sorry, you were not eligible.]]
You will have to have access to the Commerce tab in order to grant an Offer.
Offer
Select the Offer that you want to connect the Key Code to. All of the Key Codes that are created by this feature will share the same Offer.
Validity Length:
Enter the number of days that the Key Code should be valid for. You can leave this field blank if you do not want an expiration date to be set for the Key Code. An expiration date will be calculated, based on this value, and set for the Key Code when the Custom Form is submitted. Please be aware that the Offer end date has to also have not expired for the customer to be able to use the Key Code.
Eligibility:
Select "Everyone", if you want anyone to be able to get the Offer. Select "New Contacts" if you only want new Contacts, that contain a new email address, to get the Offer. Select "Existing Contacts" if you only want Contacts that were already in liveSite, to get the Offer. A Contact is considered "new" or "existing" by whether a Contact already exists for the email address that was entered by the submitter.
If the submitter is not eligible, then an error does not appear after the Custom Form is submitted. The Custom Form is still accepted. However, you can use the ^^key_code^^ mail-merge field and a conditional to show different content in the submitter email, based on whether the submitter was eligible or not: [[You were eligible. Code: ^^key_code^^||Sorry, you were not eligible.]]
Confirmation Type:
Select the type of confirmation that you want to appear after the Visitor submits the Custom Form. Select "Message" if you want a message to be shown on the Custom Form Page where the form normally appears. Select "Next Page" if you want the Visitor to be directed to a different Page.
Message:
Enter the message that you want to appear after the Visitor submits the Custom Form.
Next Page:
The Page that you want liveSite to go to when the Submit Button is clicked and the Custom Form is submitted successfully. Typically, you may wish for liveSite to go to a Custom Form Confirmation Page Type, or any other Page on your site - depending on your needs. If a Form Item View Page is selected, then when the User submits the Custom Form they will be sent to the Form Item View Page with the data that the user submitted.
Alternative Next Page:
Check this if you want certain Users to be directed to a different next Page based on whether they are in a specific Contact Group or not. This allows you to route Users to different destinations. Users must be logged in for this feature to work. You can place the Custom Form Page in a Folder with registration access control in order to require that.
If Contact Group:
Select the Contact Group that Users must be in, in order to be forwarded to the alternative next Page.
Then Go to Page:
Select the Page that you want Users to be directed to, for the alternative route. If a Form Item View Page is selected, then when the User submits the Custom Form they will be sent to the Form Item View Page with the data that the User submitted.
If User has already submitted form in the past, then show:
Select what you want to appear if a User has already submitted the Custom Form in the past and is returning to it again. If you want Users to be able to submit the Custom Form multiple times, then select "Custom Form". If you want to prevent Users from submitting the Custom Form multiple times, then select either "Message" or "Page". Users must be logged in for this feature to work. You can place the Custom Form Page in a Folder with registration access control in order to require that.
As an editor, if you are needing to view the form and you can't because you have submitted it in the past, then you may access the form by clicking on the Page from the Pages tab.
Message:
Enter the message that you want to appear if the User has submitted the Custom Form in the past.
Page:
The Page that you want liveSite to go to if the User has already submitted the Custom Form in the past. If a Form Item View Page is selected, then the data that the User submitted last time can appear on the Page.
Alternative Page:
Check this if you want certain Users to be directed to a different Page based on whether they are in a specific Contact Group or not. This allows you to route Users to different destinations. Users must be logged in for this feature to work. You can place the Custom Form Page in a Folder with registration access control in order to require that.
If Contact Group:
Select the Contact Group that Users must be in, in order to be forwarded to the alternative Page.
Then Go to Page:
Select the Page that you want Users to be directed to, for the alternative route. If a Form Item View Page is selected, then the data that the User submitted last time can appear on the Page.
Enable Pretty URLs:
Enable this feature if you want user-friendly URLs to be used when someone accesses a Submitted Form on a Form Item View Page, for this Custom Form. For example, the URL will be /blog/happy-holidays instead of /blog-article?r=123. If you are not going to be displaying Submitted Forms on a Form Item View, then you do not need to enable this feature.
IMPORTANT: You must set the "RSS / Search Element" to "title" for the appropriate field on this Custom Form, in order for this feature to work.
When this feature is enabled, the Visitor will be required to enter a unique title. An error will appear if the Visitor enters a title that is already in use. A pretty URL will be automatically generated from the title that the Visitor enters. For example, spaces and some other characters will be converted into dashes. Also, the pretty URL will be converted to lowercase. These updates will ensure that the title is user-friendly and SEO compliant.
The title is appended to the Form List View Page name in the pretty URL. For example, if the Form List View Page name is "blog" and the title of the Submitted Form is "Happy Holidays", then the pretty URL will be "/blog/happy-holidays". Even though the Form Item View Page is shown, its Page name does not appear in the pretty URL.
If this feature has been disabled in the past, and you now want to enable it, you may do so, and everything will work. liveSite will automatically prepare all of the necessary pretty URLs for every existing Submitted Form, so they are ready to be accessed. The old URLs (e.g. /blog-article?r=123) will continue to work, even after you enable this feature, in case there are links to them.
Custom Forms include built-in work-flow features, allowing you to create auto-responders easily, display confirmations for printing, and even send the form's confirmation to the Submitter and/or to other staff member to alert them each time a Custom Form is submitted.
Custom Forms work like all other Pages, which allow you to chain Custom Form Pages together or with other Page Types to easily create your own custom work flows.
1) Create or update the Submitter's User and Contact Information
When a Custom Form is submitted successfully, a new Contact is created and the Contact is added to the "Add to Contact Group" group if it is specified. If a Contact is found for the Submitter (i.e. the Submitter has already logged in), then any Custom Form field that has the optional "Connect to Contact" field property selected will update the Contact's data automatically.
2) Send optional confirmation/information to Submitter
When a Custom Form is submitted successfully, the optional "E-mail Submitter" fields can be specified and liveSite will send an e-mail each time the Custom Form is submitted successfully. If a Custom Form Confirmation Page is selected to be e-mailed, then liveSite will include the Submitters form data (from the current browser session) based on the Confirmation Pages associated "Custom Form" property. If the Page is not a Custom Form Confirmation Type, then liveSite will simply send the Page without any form data.
NOTE: This auto-responder feature requires that you create a field that is connected to the Contact e-mail address field. Otherwise, liveSite will NOT send the e-mail.
3) Send optional confirmation/notification to Administrator(s)
When a Custom Form is submitted successfully, the optional "E-mail Administrator" fields can be specified and liveSite will send an e-mail each time the Custom Form is submitted successfully. If a Custom Form Confirmation Page is selected, then liveSite will include the Submitters form data based on the Confirmation Pages associated "Custom Form" property. If the Page is not a Custom Form Confirmation Type, then liveSite will simply send the Page without any form data.
4) Show confirmation message or go to another Page
When a Custom Form is submitted successfully then a confirmation message can be shown or, if the next Page property is specified, the Submitter will be redirected to the next page.
5) Make the confirmation message or next Page conditional by selecting the Enable Quiz option.
This is useful for creating certification tests and displaying a certificate of completion ONLY if they obtain a passing percentage. If the submitter does not complete the correct percentage, they remain on the Custom Form page and a message is displayed. The Custom Form is submitted regardless of the percentage scored so that quiz administrators can audit the number of attempts and each score.
Custom Forms are flexible, allowing you to create many form processes for your specific needs by linking them together with each other and with other Page Types to customize your site's work flow.
Custom Forms share data with Contacts, so that data collected can be pre-filled and used to populate Contact information and My Account information, and other Custom Forms.
Custom Forms are work flow-enabled, allowing you to e-mail confirmations, create auto-responders, and send alerts to the Submitter and to your staff whenever a particular Custom Form is submitted.
Each Custom Form can also have one or more Custom Form Confirmation Pages associated with them to display and/or e-mail a Custom Form's data to the Submitter, and to notify your staff of the completed form. This is ideal for displaying (and e-mailing) the Custom Form data collected to the Submitter, along with a unique confirmation number for future reference.
A Custom Form cannot be deleted if any of it's submitted data exists. If no form data exists, then the Page is allowed to be deleted or the Page Type is allowed to be changed.
When a Page containing a Custom Form is duplicated, the underlying Form Definition (fields and their values) is also duplicated into the new Page. The duplicated Page and embedded Custom Form are not related to the original Page or Custom Form. You can rename the Custom Form at any time, just like the duplicated Page.
If you need to temporarily or permanently disable a Custom Form from collecting new data, you can edit the Page containing the Custom Form and set it's Page Type Properties.
Files uploaded using Custom Forms will be deleted automatically when the Submitted Form is deleted.
Since Custom Forms are integrated into Pages, each Custom Forms is embedded into a Page and shares the Page's security. By simply moving the Page containing a Custom Form to a different Folder, you can control the access to submit, view, and edit Custom Forms and their associated data.
Any User that has "Edit" rights to a Folder that contains the Custom Form Page, can edit the Custom Form AND it's data.
Any Visitor or User with "View" rights to a Folder containing a Custom View Page Type, can view form data it displays REGARDLESS of their access rights to the Folder where the Custom Form Page resides. Be sure that you limit the View Designer to include only data that you want to display to the Visitor or User.
Any User with "Edit" rights to a Folder containing a Custom View Page will also see an [Edit] button on the bottom of the page when viewing it. They can click on the edit button to edit the selected Forms Custom View Data Page Type.
Files uploaded using Custom Forms are assigned to specified Folders, thus all access rights to the Folder also apply to the uploaded files.
Spammers use unprotected web forms in an attempt to use another's website to post and broadcast their own advertising. To combat this malicious technique, if CAPTCHA is enabled in the Site Settings then all Custom Forms have a built-in CAPTCHA feature that is automatically enabled if a Custom Form is displayed to any site visitor that has is not logged into the website. The CAPTCHA asks a simple challenge question that the visitor must answer correctly in order to submit the Custom Form.
There are times when your staff may need to submit a Custom Form on behalf of another person or User. When this occurs, any "Connect to Contact" fields in the Custom Form will overwrite the Submitter's Contact information. In this case, the "Connect to Contact" feature is undesirable. To disable this feature, a special value ("connect_to_contact=false") can be added to any Custom Form Page link to disable this feature for any Submitted Form:
Example: "/custom_form_page?connect_to_contact=false"
You have the option of passing the default value for a field via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on the Edit Custom Form Field screen or a value from the Contact.
If you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, then you can do that by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only field unchecked for the Form Field and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
There are several different field types that can be added to any Custom Form. Each field type has properties to allow you to collect many different types of information.
To edit any existing Custom Form field, select the Field. To add a new Custom Form Field, click "Create Form Field".
You may select Fields and then click the Delete Selected button to delete Fields. WARNING: If you are editing a Custom Form Field, then all Submitted Form data that has been collected for the selected Field(s) will also be deleted. This means that the collected data for the Field(s) will no longer exist under the Forms tab or on Form List/Item Views.
However, if you are editing a different type of form, like a Product Form, Custom Shipping Form, or Custom Billing Form, then the collected data for the Field(s) will NOT be deleted. For example, collected Product Form data will still appear for the Order, even if you delete the Field(s).
There are several different field types that can be added to any Custom Form. Each field type has properties to allow you to collect many different types of information.
Here is a list of the Field Types you can collect using a Custom Form and their associated properties:
Type:
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed.
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Size:
The size in characters of the input field.
Maximum Characters:
This is the maximum number of characters that you will allow to be entered in this field.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Connect to Contact:
If you would like this field to be pre-filled with a field from the Submitter's Contact record, select the field your would like to connect. When the Custom Form is submitted, the Contact field will be updated with the value submitted for this field.
NOTE: This feature will only work if the Submitter is logged into liveSite when the form data is submitted (ie. the Page containing the Custom Form is located in a non-public Folder). Also, take care not to connect to a Contact field that cannot store the same type of data or you may experience unexpected results (see Contacts for more information).
TIP: If someone needs to submit a Custom Form on behalf of someone else and the submitter does not want his/her Contact info prefilled or updated, then the submitter can add "?connect_to_contact=false" to the end of the URL in order to disable the Connect to Contact feature. An example appears below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?connect_to_contact=false
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Check this box to include this field's value in the passing percentage calculation. (This field works in conjunction with the "Enable Quiz" and "Quiz Pass Percentage" properties of the Custom Form, which prevents the submitter from going to the "Next Page" without a passing percentage.)
Enter the value to match against the value entered by the Custom Form's submitter. This value is not case-sensitive. Leading and trailing spaces will be ignored.
Type:
Text Area
This field type is used to collect multiple lines of text data.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Maximum Characters:
This is the maximum number of characters that you will allow to be entered in this field.
Rows:
The total number of rows of text to display in the input field.
Columns:
The total number of columns of text to display in the input field.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Connect to Contact:
If you would like this field to be pre-filled with a field from the Submitter's Contact record, select the field your would like to connect. When the Custom Form is submitted, the Contact field will be updated with the value submitted for this field.
NOTE: This feature will only work if the Submitter is logged into liveSite when the form data is submitted (i.e. the Page containing the Custom Form is located in a non-public Folder). Also, take care not to connect to a Contact field that cannot store the same type of data (see Contacts for more information).
TIP: If someone needs to submit a Custom Form on behalf of someone else and the submitter does not want his/her Contact info prefilled or updated, then the submitter can add "?connect_to_contact=false" to the end of the URL in order to disable the Connect to Contact feature. An example appears below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?connect_to_contact=false
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Enable Rich-text Editor:
Check this box if you want to enter HTML, instead of plain-text, for this field. A special editor will appear which will allow you to enter content in a WYSIWYG fashion. For example, the editor will allow you to bold text.
If this field is an RSS / Search Element field (e.g. title, description) it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Type:
Pick List
This field type is used to collect one or more values from a drop-down list of predefined values.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Size:
The size in characters of the input field.
Allow Multiple Values:
If you want to accept multiple values, check this box.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Connect to Contact:
If you would like this field to be pre-filled with a field from the Submitter's Contact record, select the field your would like to connect. When the Custom Form is submitted, the Contact field will be updated with the value submitted for this field.
NOTE: This feature will only work if the Submitter is logged into liveSite when the form data is submitted (i.e. the Page containing the Custom Form is located in a non-public Folder). Also, take care not to connect to a Contact field that cannot store the same type of data (see Contacts for more information).
TIP: If someone needs to submit a Custom Form on behalf of someone else and the submitter does not want his/her Contact info prefilled or updated, then the submitter can add "?connect_to_contact=false" to the end of the URL in order to disable the Connect to Contact feature. An example appears below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?connect_to_contact=false
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Choices:
"Choices" allow you to display a list of items with each item in the list representing a (optional) corresponding "value" that is actually stored with the form data. Enter the displayed choices and their optional properties, separated by a pipe symbol "|". Separate each choice with a carriage return. See available properties below. All properties are optional.
Properties:
Label
Enter the label that you want to appear for the choice.
Example: Label 1
Value
Enter the value that you want to be stored if this choice is selected by the Visitor. If a value property is not included, then the label is used for the value.
Example: Label 1|Value 1
You may include a blank value if you do not want a choice to have a value (e.g. -Select one-|).
Selected by Default
Enter "on" if you want this choice to be selected by default or "off" if you do not want it to be selected by default. This is useful for multi-selection pick list and check box Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1|on
Trigger
If you want this choice to act as a trigger that filters choices in a different target Field, then enter the target Field name, then a "=", and then the list of filtered values (separated by commas) that you want to appear in the target Field. This property only works for pick list Fields. Also, this property only works when this Field is an office use only Field that does not appear on the Custom Form. The trigger will also work when a Submitted Form is being edited from a Form Item View Page and the Visitor does not have access to office use only Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1||category=category_1,category_2
Upload Folder
If you want uploaded Files to be placed into a specific Folder when this choice is selected, then enter the Folder ID for this property. This will override the Folder that is selected for all file upload Fields on this Custom Form if this choice is selected. You must have edit rights to the Folder ID that you enter. You can find the ID for a Folder by editing the Folder and then looking in the address bar of your browser. This property only works for pick list Fields (that do not allow multiple selection) and radio button Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1|||123
You may enter a blank line for a choice in order to create a blank option for the Field.
If you need to use a property that comes after a property that you don't need to use, then you will need to include a single pipe and blank value for each preceding property. For example, if you need to use the upload folder property but don't need to enter some other properties, then you can enter a choice line like the following example: Label 1||||123
If you want to e-mail an additional administrator when a Visitor selects a specific choice, then you may add ^^example@example.com^^ to the end of the choice line, as can be seen in the example below. You should replace example@example.com with the administrator's e-mail address. You may also enter multiple email addresses, separated by a comma, for a choice (e.g. see Choice 2 below). The administrator e-mail properties must be set in the Page Type Properties for the Custom Form. This feature is supported for Custom Forms but not Product Forms.
Choice 1 ^^example@example.com^^
Choice 2 ^^admin1@example.com, admin2@example.com^^
Check this box to include this field's value in the passing percentage calculation. (This field works in conjunction with the "Enable Quiz" and "Quiz Pass Percentage" properties of the Custom Form, which prevents the submitter from going to the "Next Page" without a passing percentage.)
Type:
Radio Button
This field type is used to collect only one value from a list of values.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Connect to Contact:
If you would like this field to be pre-filled with a field from the Submitter's Contact record, select the field your would like to connect. When the Custom Form is submitted, the Contact field will be updated with the value submitted for this field.
NOTE: This feature will only work if the Submitter is logged into liveSite when the form data is submitted (ie. the Page containing the Custom Form is located in a non-public Folder). Also, take care not to connect to a Contact field that cannot store the same type of data (see Contacts for more information).
TIP: If someone needs to submit a Custom Form on behalf of someone else and the submitter does not want his/her Contact info prefilled or updated, then the submitter can add "?connect_to_contact=false" to the end of the URL in order to disable the Connect to Contact feature. An example appears below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?connect_to_contact=false
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data (see [FORMS & VIEWS]) will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Choices:
"Choices" allow you to display a list of items with each item in the list representing a (optional) corresponding "value" that is actually stored with the form data. Enter the displayed choices and their optional properties, separated by a pipe symbol "|". Separate each choice with a carriage return. See available properties below. All properties are optional.
Properties:
Label
Enter the label that you want to appear for the choice.
Example: Label 1
Value
Enter the value that you want to be stored if this choice is selected by the Visitor. If a value property is not included, then the label is used for the value.
Example: Label 1|Value 1
You may include a blank value if you do not want a choice to have a value (e.g. -Select one-|).
Selected by Default
Enter "on" if you want this choice to be selected by default or "off" if you do not want it to be selected by default. This is useful for multi-selection pick list and check box Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1|on
Trigger
If you want this choice to act as a trigger that filters choices in a different target Field, then enter the target Field name, then a "=", and then the list of filtered values (separated by commas) that you want to appear in the target Field. This property only works for pick list Fields. Also, this property only works when this Field is an office use only Field that does not appear on the Custom Form. The trigger will also work when a Submitted Form is being edited from a Form Item View Page and the Visitor does not have access to office use only Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1||category=category_1,category_2
Upload Folder
If you want uploaded Files to be placed into a specific Folder when this choice is selected, then enter the Folder ID for this property. This will override the Folder that is selected for all file upload Fields on this Custom Form if this choice is selected. You must have edit rights to the Folder ID that you enter. You can find the ID for a Folder by editing the Folder and then looking in the address bar of your browser. This property only works for pick list Fields (that do not allow multiple selection) and radio button Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1|||123
You may enter a blank line for a choice in order to create a blank option for the Field.
If you need to use a property that comes after a property that you don't need to use, then you will need to include a single pipe and blank value for each preceding property. For example, if you need to use the upload folder property but don't need to enter some other properties, then you can enter a choice line like the following example: Label 1||||123
If you want to e-mail an additional administrator when a Visitor selects a specific choice, then you may add ^^example@example.com^^ to the end of the choice line, as can be seen in the example below. You should replace example@example.com with the administrator's e-mail address. You may also enter multiple email addresses, separated by a comma, for a choice (e.g. see Choice 2 below). The administrator e-mail properties must be set in the Page Type Properties for the Custom Form. This feature is supported for Custom Forms but not Product Forms.
Choice 1 ^^example@example.com^^
Choice 2 ^^admin1@example.com, admin2@example.com^^
Enter the value to match against the value entered by the Custom Form's submitter. This value is not case-sensitive. Leading and trailing spaces will be ignored.
Type:
Check Box
This field type is used to collect one or more values from a list of values.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Connect to Contact:
If you would like this field to be pre-filled with a field from the Submitter's Contact record, select the field your would like to connect. When the Custom Form is submitted, the Contact field will be updated with the value submitted for this field.
NOTE: This feature will only work if the Submitter is logged into liveSite when the form data is submitted (ie. the Page containing the Custom Form is located in a non-public Folder). Also, take care not to connect to a Contact field that cannot store the same type of data (see Contacts for more information).
TIP: If someone needs to submit a Custom Form on behalf of someone else and the submitter does not want his/her Contact info prefilled or updated, then the submitter can add "?connect_to_contact=false" to the end of the URL in order to disable the Connect to Contact feature. An example appears below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?connect_to_contact=false
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Choices:
"Choices" allow you to display a list of items with each item in the list representing a (optional) corresponding "value" that is actually stored with the form data. Enter the displayed choices and their optional properties, separated by a pipe symbol "|". Separate each choice with a carriage return. See available properties below. All properties are optional.
Properties:
Label
Enter the label that you want to appear for the choice.
Example: Label 1
Value
Enter the value that you want to be stored if this choice is selected by the Visitor. If a value property is not included, then the label is used for the value.
Example: Label 1|Value 1
You may include a blank value if you do not want a choice to have a value (e.g. -Select one-|).
Selected by Default
Enter "on" if you want this choice to be selected by default or "off" if you do not want it to be selected by default. This is useful for multi-selection pick list and check box Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1|on
Trigger
If you want this choice to act as a trigger that filters choices in a different target Field, then enter the target Field name, then a "=", and then the list of filtered values (separated by commas) that you want to appear in the target Field. This property only works for pick list Fields. Also, this property only works when this Field is an office use only Field that does not appear on the Custom Form. The trigger will also work when a Submitted Form is being edited from a Form Item View Page and the Visitor does not have access to office use only Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1||category=category_1,category_2
Upload Folder
If you want uploaded Files to be placed into a specific Folder when this choice is selected, then enter the Folder ID for this property. This will override the Folder that is selected for all file upload Fields on this Custom Form if this choice is selected. You must have edit rights to the Folder ID that you enter. You can find the ID for a Folder by editing the Folder and then looking in the address bar of your browser. This property only works for pick list Fields (that do not allow multiple selection) and radio button Fields.
Example: Label 1|Value 1|||123
You may enter a blank line for a choice in order to create a blank option for the Field.
If you need to use a property that comes after a property that you don't need to use, then you will need to include a single pipe and blank value for each preceding property. For example, if you need to use the upload folder property but don't need to enter some other properties, then you can enter a choice line like the following example: Label 1||||123
If you want to e-mail an additional administrator when a Visitor selects a specific choice, then you may add ^^example@example.com^^ to the end of the choice line, as can be seen in the example below. You should replace example@example.com with the administrator's e-mail address. You may also enter multiple email addresses, separated by a comma, for a choice (e.g. see Choice 2 below). The administrator e-mail properties must be set in the Page Type Properties for the Custom Form. This feature is supported for Custom Forms but not Product Forms.
Choice 1 ^^example@example.com^^
Choice 2 ^^admin1@example.com, admin2@example.com^^
Enter the value to match against the value entered by the Custom Form's submitter. This value is not case-sensitive. Leading and trailing spaces will be ignored.
Type:
File Upload
This field type is used to upload an Attachment to the Submitted Form. For example, a Visitor might want to upload a picture or a PDF in order to share more information. An Attachment will be deleted automatically when its Submitted Form is deleted. Attachments can be found easily via My Attachments in the Files tab.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed.
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Upload to:
Select the Folder where the File will be stored. This ensures the proper file access rights protection for the file.
In order for a Visitor to have access to view a Submitted Form Attachment, after it is uploaded, the Visitor must satisfy the access control requirement (e.g. public, private, or etc.) for the Folder that you select here, like any other File. However, for an Attachment, a Visitor must also have access to view the Submitted Form for the Attachment on a Form List View and/or Form Item View. This means that someone must create a Form List View and/or Form Item View so the Visitor has access to the Attachment on the view. The layout for the Form List View and/or Form Item View must contain the file upload field.
Also, the Visitor must have access to view the Attachment's Submitted Form as determined by the Form List View's "Viewer Filter" property and/or the Form Item View's "Allow only submitter and watchers to view his/her submitted form(s)" property. This prevents a Visitor from accessing Attachments from a Submitted Form that he/she does not have access to.
Size:
The size in characters of the input field.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Type:
Information
This field type is used to add custom text and information between fields.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for positioning purposes only. Since this field type does not collect form data, it is not exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Information:
Enter text or HTML in this area that you wish to be displayed in the Custom Form and Custom Form Confirmation.
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Type:
E-mail Address
This field type is used to collect a single line of text data that must be formatted as a valid internet e-mail address.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Size:
The size in characters of the input field.
Maximum Characters:
This is the maximum number of characters that you will allow to be entered in this field.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Connect to Contact:
If you would like this field to be pre-filled with a field from the Submitter's Contact record, select the field your would like to connect. When the Custom Form is submitted, the Contact field will be updated with the value submitted for this field.
NOTE: This feature will only work if the Submitter is logged into liveSite when the form data is submitted (ie. the Page containing the Custom Form is located in a non-public Folder). Also, take care not to connect this field to a Contact field that cannot store the same type of data (see Contacts for more information).
TIP: If someone needs to submit a Custom Form on behalf of someone else and the submitter does not want his/her Contact info prefilled or updated, then the submitter can add "?connect_to_contact=false" to the end of the URL in order to disable the Connect to Contact feature. An example appears below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?connect_to_contact=false
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Check this box to include this field's value in the passing percentage calculation. (This field works in conjunction with the "Enable Quiz" and "Quiz Pass Percentage" properties of the Custom Form, which prevents the submitter from going to the "Next Page" without a passing percentage.)
Enter the value to match against the value entered by the Custom Form's submitter. This value is not case-sensitive. Leading and trailing spaces will be ignored.
Type:
Date
This field type is used to collect a single calendar date, and attempts to resolve the date no matter what format is used to enter the date value.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed.
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Size:
The size in characters of the input field.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Check this box to include this field's value in the passing percentage calculation. (This field works in conjunction with the "Enable Quiz" and "Quiz Pass Percentage" properties of the Custom Form, which prevents the submitter from going to the "Next Page" without a passing percentage.)
Enter the value to match against the value entered by the Custom Form's submitter. This value is not case-sensitive. Leading and trailing spaces will be ignored.
Type:
Date and Time
This field type is used to collect a calendar date and time (timestamp), and attempts to resolve the date and time no matter what format is used to enter the value.
Name:
This is the Name of this field. It is displayed for sorting purposes and is the column heading when the collected form data for this field is exported.
The field name cannot contain the following special characters: ^ & [ ] < > /
RSS / Search Element:
This will link a Custom Form field to an RSS Element and/or a Site Search Element.
RSS Elements are used with Form List View Page Types to broadcast Submitted Forms as an RSS feed and are defined as follows:
category: This is the RSS category that the Submitted Form will be in.The title and description fields that you set will also be used to output a dynamic title and meta description, respectively, in the HTML when a Submitted Form appears on a Form Item View Page. The title will appear in the web browser title bar and sometimes in search engine results. The description is sometimes used by search engines to determine relevancy and might also appear in search engine results.
The title field will also be used to generate a pretty URL if pretty URLs are enabled in the Custom Form Page properties.
NOTE: You must have at least one field in your Custom Form linked to an RSS Element before a feed can be created.
NOTE: You will need to make sure that the Form Item View page property for the Form List View Page is set or that the layout for the Form List View contains a link to a Form Item View Page so that the links in the RSS will work.
Site Search Elements are used to store form data for the results set that is displayed when a site search is performed and are defined as follows:
title: Select this value for any field you wish to be used by Site Search as the Title of the submitted form data in the search results.If you use a Text Area type for an RSS field, then it is recommended that you do NOT check "Enable Rich-text Editor". The reason for this is because the title and meta description HTML tags are not allowed to contain HTML tags. They should contain plain-text. If you check "Enable Rich-text Editor" anyway, then this system will convert the HTML to plain-text when the content is outputted for the title and meta description tags.
Label:
This is the Label that is displayed to the left of the field in the Custom Form, the optional Custom Form Confirmation, and when the collected form data is viewed.
Required:
If data must be present in this field for the Custom Form to be submitted, check this box.
Default Value:
If this field should be prefilled with a default value when the form appears, enter the value here. For example, if you have a "city" field on your form and you know that the majority of your Visitors will need to submit "Dallas", then you can enter that for a default value so that Visitors do not have to enter it.
Alternatively, you may check to use the Folder name as the default value. The field will then be prefilled with the Folder name for the Page that the form appeared on. If the form was embedded via a secondary System Region, then the Folder for the Page that was requested in the address bar will be used. See example below for how this feature can be used.
Let's say that you are the administrator for a school's website. You want to allow staff members to submit news articles via a form for both the Athletics department and the Fine Arts department. John should only have access to submit articles for Athletics. Mike should only have access to submit articles for Fine Arts. You can create one Custom Form with a department pick list field that is office use only with options for "Athletics" and "Fine Arts". You can check to use the Folder name for the default value. Then, you can setup two different Folders called "Athletics" and "Fine Arts" (make sure the Folder names match the department field options exactly). Then, create two different pages that have the same embedded Custom Form via a secondary System Region in a Page Style. Then, give John view access to the Athletics Folder and give Mike view access to the Fine Arts folder. Make sure that that Mike and John do not have edit or view access to the Folder that the original Custom Form is in. Now, when John or Mike submits the form on their own pages, they will not see the office use only department field and the correct department value will be submitted along with the form. You can then create two different Form List Views for the two departments using view filters so that website Visitors can view the articles for each department.
If this field is connected to a Contact field and the Visitor is logged in, then the Contact field value will be prefilled and the default value will be ignored. Also, the default value will be ignored even if the Contact field value is blank, so that if a User submits a form multiple times and wants a field to be empty, he/she won't have to remove the default value every time.
If a field does not appear on the form because it is an office use only field, the default value will still be submitted with the form, behind the scenes.
If the field is also required, the default value will meet that requirement.
You also have the option of passing the default value via the query string in the URL. This is useful when you want to set one default value when a Visitor comes from one location but set a different default value when a Visitor comes from a different location. You can link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below in order to accomplish this.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to set the default value for. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. Replace [DEFAULT VALUE] with the default value that you want to set. If a default value is passed via the query string, then it has the highest precedence, which means that it will be used instead of the default value that you might enter on this screen or a value from a Contact.
Size:
The size in characters of the input field.
Position:
This is the vertical position or order of this field relative to all the other Custom Form Fields.
Spacing:
Select "Above" if you wish to create double-spacing above the field in the Custom Form. Select "Below" if you wish to create double-spacing below the field in the Custom Form.
Office Use Only:
Check this box to hide this field from the Submitter. Once the Custom Form is submitted, Users that have access to the form's data will be able to view and modify this field.
Alternatively, if you want to conditionally hide a field depending on where a Visitor came from, there is a separate feature that allows you to simply hide a field by passing a value via the query string in the URL. This feature is often used in combination with passing a default value via the query string, when you don't want the Visitor to edit the default value that was passed. To use this feature, leave Office Use Only unchecked and link to the Custom Form via a URL like the one below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?show_[FIELD ID]=false
Replace [FIELD ID] with the ID for the field that you want to hide. You can find the field ID by editing a field and looking in the address bar. The number that comes directly after "id=" is the field ID. If you also want to pass the default value via the query string then the URL should look like the example below.
http://www.example.com/custom_form?value_[FIELD ID]=[DEFAULT VALUE]&show_[FIELD ID]=false
Check this box to include this field's value in the passing percentage calculation. (This field works in conjunction with the "Enable Quiz" and "Quiz Pass Percentage" properties of the Custom Form, which prevents the submitter from going to the "Next Page" without a passing percentage.)
Enter the value to match against the value entered by the Custom Form's submitter. This value is not case-sensitive. Leading and trailing spaces will be ignored.
You may click the Delete button to delete a Field. WARNING: If you are editing a Custom Form Field, then all Submitted Form data that has been collected for that Field will also be deleted. This means that the collected data for the Field will no longer exist under the Forms tab or on Form List/Item Views.
However, if you are editing a different type of form, like a Product Form, Custom Shipping Form, or Custom Billing Form, then the collected data for that Field will NOT be deleted. For example, collected Product Form data will still appear for the Order, even if you delete the Field.
The Custom Form Confirmation Page Type allows you to display a confirmation page after a Custom Form has been submitted. This page will display the data submitted, a reference code for the form data, and a timestamp of the receipt of the form data. This Page can also be e-mailed to the Submitter, as well as e-mailed to anyone on your staff.
A Custom Form Confirmation Page can be used to show a confirmation for any Custom Form. This means that you may use one Custom Form Confirmation Page for multiple Custom Form Pages, if you want.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
Continue Button Label:
Enter the text you wish to display for the "Continue" button.
Next Page:
The Page that you want the Submitter directed to when the "Continue" Button is clicked.
NOTE: This Page will only display the information if the submitted form has been found during the current session (before they leave the website or close their browser).
Form Item View Page Type displays a single row of data collected from a single Custom Form (a submitted form). You can define a layout for the fields you want to display. Not all data collected on a form must be visible, you can decide which item's are visible and even mask or hide some fields.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
In order to use this feature this site must have an Elite hosting plan or software subscription and your User role must be Administrator or Designer. Also, your site administrator must enable PHP regions by adding the following to the config.php file. If you can see this field, then PHP regions are already enabled.
define('PHP_REGIONS', true);
You may enter the opening <?php and closing ?> tags in this field, however they are not required.
DISCLAIMER: Hook code can create security and stability issues for your website. We are not responsible in any way for the results of any code that is executed within your web space. Be extremely careful with this feature. You can accidentally destroy your website database, software, files, and configuration!!!
To design your Form View Page's layout of the data fields and add any data filters, put the Page into "Edit Mode" or edit the Page Properties, and then edit the embedded Form View.
If you are linking a Form Item View Page from a Form List View Page, then first, make sure you have selected this Form Item View Page in the Form List View's Page properties. Then edit your Form List View Page and create a link to the Form Item View Page using this format:
^^form_item_view^^
liveSite will then automatically create a URL with the Page name and reference code, thus connecting the referenced row of data from the Submitted Form to the Form Item View.
NOTE: If you selected a Form Item view Page to be e-mailed when a Custom Form is submitted, then the Form Item View Page will display the data from the Custom Form that was submitted. Also, if a Form Item View Page is selected to be the Next Page for the Custom Form, then when the User submits the Custom Form they will be sent to the Form Item View Page with the appropriate Reference Code.
If the Visitor has access to edit the Submitted Form that appears on this Form Item View, then an edit button will appear that allows the Visitor to edit the Submitted Form from the front-end. The Visitor will only be able to edit Fields that appear in the layout of this Form Item View.
For file upload Fields, if there is no existing file, then you can upload a File. If there is an existing file, you can replace the File and possibly delete it. The delete option only appears if the Field is optional (i.e. not required). If the Field is required and you need to delete the File, you can temporarily update the Field to be optional or you can delete the File from the Files tab, if you have access.
Update this Page's display of select data from a single Submitted Form. (It must be linked to from a Form List View Page.)
Copy existing Custom Form fields from the top of the Page and paste them in the layout area. The layout area expects HTML, so you should add HTML tags around content and fields (e.g. <p>^^example^^</p>).
Use the following URL format to link to files and embed images:
/^^example^^ , where example is a form field that contains the name of the File uploaded.
Use the following format to output different content depending on whether there is a value or not:
[[He entered ^^name^^ as his name.||He did not enter a name.]]
You can use the following format to customize the date format for date and date & time fields. The format can either be a PHP date format or "relative" for a relative time (e.g. "2 minutes ago", "2 minutes from now").
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
Examples:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%relative%%
NOTE: For "relative" date/time formatting, once the date goes beyond one month, the full date and/or time is displayed.
The date & time will generally match the exact date & time that was entered into the Submitted Form. The date & time is not adjusted for the User's timezone and a timezone abbreviation is not automatically outputted with the date & time because it is not known which timezone the person had in mind when entering the date & time.
Alternatively, if you want the date & time to be adjusted for the User's timezone and you want a timezone abbreviation to appear, then you may include a timezone character in the format mentioned above. Use "T" for an abbreviation (e.g. CST) or "e" for a full name (e.g. US/Central).
System Fields are fields that are available to include in your layout that are automatically created for all Submitted Form data.
Form Fields are fields that were created on the Custom Form that the Form List View Page is associated with (through it's Page Properties).
Although they are not listed under Form Fields, you may also include information fields in the layout, so that they will appear when a Submitted Form is edited on the Form Item View. Information fields are areas of content on the Custom Form that do not actually collect data from the Submitter. For example, if the information field name is "example" then you may include ^^example^^ in the layout. The information field will not appear when the Submitted Form is being viewed. It will only appear when the Submitted Form is being edited.
There are several system fields (see below) which allow you to display information about Comments that have be added to Submitted Forms. These fields can be used to setup a forum that shows the number of replies and newest reply for various topics.
Use the following URL format to link directly to the newest Comment:
#c-^^newest_comment_id^^
NOTE: Form Item View Pages can contain two different Layouts when necessary to support any redesign of the Page. A notice will appear which explains this if you are viewing the Layout in Theme Preview Mode. See Page Styles for more info about Page Style Collections. v2017.1
Form List View Page Type displays one or more rows of submitted data collected from a Custom Form.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
Custom Form:
Select the existing Custom Form from which you want to display it's submitted form data.
Form Item View:
Select the Form Item View that this Form List View will link to. This is used by various features (e.g. ^^form_item_view^^, Form View Directory, advanced site search, RSS) in order to determine which Form Item View is connected to this Form List View. It is important that you select this field properly so that links to the Form Item View work correctly.
Enable Viewer Filter:
Check this if you want to limit the Submitted Forms that are shown based on who is viewing this Page (i.e. the Viewer). Once you check this field, then you will have the ability to check one or more options below (you should check at least one). If you do not check this field, then the same Submitted Forms will be shown, regardless of who the Viewer is, depending on the filters you have setup on the Edit Form List View screen.
If you check this field, then you should also make sure that this Page's Folder has access control, other than Public, because the Viewer has to be logged in to see results. For example, you might want to use Registration access control.
Include Forms from Submitter:
Check this if you want to show Submitted Forms where the Viewer is the Submitter. For example, if you are setting up a view to show a customer his/her support tickets, then you would check this option. The Viewer is considered to be the Submitter if he/she is the User that submitted the Custom Form or if his/her User's email address matches the email address that was entered in a connect-to-contact email address field in the Submitted Form.
If you check this field, then you will probably also want to check "Allow only submitter and watchers to view his/her submitted form(s)" on the Edit Page Properties screen of the corresponding Form Item View.
Include Forms for Watchers:
Check this if you want to show Submitted Forms where the Viewer is a Comment Watcher on the Form Item View Page for the Submitted Form. For example, you might allow customers to add Comment Watchers to their support tickets and you want to allow those Watchers to see a list of the support tickets that they are watching.
Let's say that John is a customer that originally submitted a support ticket, and John added Jane as a Comment Watcher to one particular support ticket, because he wants Jane to be notified about updates to the ticket. If you want to allow Jane to see that support ticket in this view, because she is a Watcher of that ticket, then check this field.
If you check this field, then you will probably also want to check "Allow only submitter and watchers to view his/her submitted form(s)" on the Edit Page Properties screen of the corresponding Form Item View.
Include Forms for Form Editors:
Check this if you want to show Submitted Forms where the Viewer has edit access to the Submitted Form. This includes all the following types of Viewers.
Generally, you will want to check this option, because this just includes Submitted Forms for a Viewer that already has edit access to them. You might want to uncheck this option if, for example, you are a Site Administrator and you actually submit support tickets yourself, just like your customers, and you only want to see tickets that you have submitted yourself, instead of seeing tickets for all customers.
TIP: To design your Form View Page's layout of the data fields and add any data filters, put the Page into "Edit Mode" or edit the Page Properties, and then edit the embedded Form View.
This screen allows you to layout the display of data from multiple submitted forms. This is one of the most powerful features of liveSite.
You can update the way this Page displays data from multiple Submitted Forms, and optionally link this Page to a Form Item View Page, that will display an individual submitted form, by using the ^^form_item_view^^ system field.
This is an optional field that allows you to enter HTML that will appear before the list of Submitted Forms. This field can be used in combination with the footer below to wrap HTML around the list of Submitted Forms. For example, you could enter <div class="example_wrapper"> for the header and </div> for the footer.
The content for this field is outputted directly above the list of Submitted Forms. For example, the content will appear below the search field that might exist. Also, the content for this field is only outputted if at least one Submitted Form appears. If there are no results, then the content is not outputted.
All the available fields that can be displayed are listed, sandwiched between the double-caret (^^) which are used by liveSite to identify where to replace the fields with data when displaying the Page. Simply copy any of the fields (be sure to include the double-carets) into the Layout area.
System Fields are fields that are available to include in your layout that are automatically created for all Submitted Form data.
Form Fields are fields that were created on the Custom Form that the Form List View Page is associated with (through it's Page Properties).
There are several system fields which allow you to display information about Comments that have be added to Submitted Forms. These fields can be used to setup a forum that shows the number of replies and newest reply for various topics.
Use the following URL format to link directly to the newest Comment on the Form Item View Page:
^^form_item_view^^#c-^^newest_comment_id^^
Hints provide a quick way of cutting and pasting common layout values into your layout area.
The Form List View Layout area, or "layout" is where you place your available fields to be replaced by the actual data fields from the Submitted Forms. The layout area represents a single submitted form's data. Think of this area as a row in a spreadsheet, or table. It will be output over and over until all the Submitted Forms are displayed. The layout area expects HTML, so you should add HTML tags around content and fields (e.g. <p>^^example^^</p>).
Most of the time, you will not only want to display the Submitted Form data in a List, but also allow your site visitors to "drill into" the actual Submitted Form data and view additional fields that are not added to the layout itself. To do this, create a link in the layout and set the link URL to ^^form_item_view^^ (e.g. <a href="^^form_item_view^^">Example</a>). liveSite will then automatically create a URL. If the link does not work then make sure that a Form Item View Page is set in the page properties for this Form List View.
You can display information within the layout area based on a value being available to display. For example, you may want to hide the label of the field if it is not present the Submitted Form data. Use the following format to output different content depending on whether there is a value or not:
[[There is a value: ^^example^^ || There is not a value]]
If you have created a Custom Form with File Upload fields on it, you will need to dynamically link to them through the layout. To do this, use the following URL format:
/^^example^^ , where example is a form field that contains the name of the File uploaded.
You want to format your date and time values in different ways for spacing or affect. liveSite allows you to use virtually any format you desire. To customize the date and time values for the available time and date fields, use the following format within your layout:
Format:
^^field_name^^%%format%%
format can either be a PHP date format or "relative" for a relative time (e.g. "2 minutes ago", "2 minutes from now").
Examples:
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A%%
^^submitted_date_and_time^^%%relative%%
NOTE: For "relative" date/time formatting, once the date goes beyond one month, the full date and/or time is displayed.
The date & time will generally match the exact date & time that was entered into the Submitted Form. The date & time is not adjusted for the User's timezone and a timezone abbreviation is not automatically outputted with the date & time because it is not known which timezone the person had in mind when entering the date & time.
Alternatively, if you want the date & time to be adjusted for the User's timezone and you want a timezone abbreviation to appear, then you may include a timezone character in the format mentioned above. Use "T" for an abbreviation (e.g. CST) or "e" for a full name (e.g. US/Central).
This is an optional field that allows you to enter HTML that will appear after the list of Submitted Forms. This field can be used in combination with the header above to wrap HTML around the list of Submitted Forms. For example, you could enter <div class="example_wrapper"> for the header and </div> for the footer.
The content for this field is outputted directly below the list of Submitted Forms. For example, the content will appear above pagination links that might exist. Also, the content for this field is only outputted if at least one Submitted Form appears. If there are no results, then the content is not outputted.
You can sort the order in which the Submitted Form data (rows) are output. "Ascending" orders results from a-z/0-9, while "descending" orders results from z-a/9-0. Normally you will want to choose "alphabetical", however if the field you select contains only numbers (e.g. price, square footage), then you will want to select "numerical", so the results appear in the correct order. Numerical ordering works for both integer numbers (e.g. 1, 2, 3) and decimal numbers (e.g. 0.75, 1.25, 10.333).
NOTE: "Random" sort order is only available for the first sort order option but is useful if you want the rows of Submitted Form data to be displayed in a random order each time the Page is displayed.
You can limit the nuber of Submitted Forms (data rows) are displayed on the page. If you don't set the Maximum Number of Results Per Page, then liveSite will output pagination navigation automatically.
You can add filters that define exactly which Submitted Forms (data rows) are displayed on the Page.
If you only want to show Complete Submitted Forms then you can add a filter like "[Complete] [is equal to] [Complete]". Alternatively, if you only want to show Incomplete Submitted Forms then you can add a filter like "[Complete] [is not equal to] [Complete]". If you want to show both Complete & Incomplete Submitted Forms, then you can simply not add a filter for the Complete field.
TIP: If you want to limit the Submitted Forms that are shown based on who the Viewer is (e.g. show a customer only his/her support tickets), then we recommend using the "Viewer Filter" feature on the Edit Page Properties screen for this Form List View.
Enable Search:
Check this to add a search box to the Form List View Page. Search will allow the Visitor to enter a keyword and liveSite will search all (filtered) Form List View data for the keyword and display the resulting Submitted Form data (rows) that contain that keyword.
NOTE: The keyword search will search all system and custom form fields, not just fields that appear in the display layout above.
Label:
Enter the text that you want to appear as a placeholder in the search field. Once the Visitor starts to type their search, then the label will disappear from the search field. The label will reappear if they remove their search.
You can set this to something general like "Search" or something more specific like "Search Blog". You can also remove the label, if you want the search field to be empty by default.
This label is also used for the tooltip title that appears when a Visitor hovers their cursor over the search icon.
Enable Advanced Search:
Check this to allow the Visitor to search specific fields. A toggle button (i.e. +/-) will appear that allows the Visitor to expand or collapse the advanced search. The Visitor may use the keyword search and advanced search at the same time. You may define the fields that are available in the layout below.
The results will only be filtered for the advanced search fields that the Visitor completes. If a Visitor leaves a field blank, then that field will be ignored.
In general, fields will appear as they are defined in the Custom Form Field properties. For example, if a field has a text box type, then it will appear as a text box in the advanced search. There are some exceptions to this. For example, a text area field will appear in the advanced search as a text box, because the Visitor will not need a full text area to enter a search term. Also, dynamic fields will always appear as a pick list.
If a default/blank option does not exist for pick lists and radio button sets, a default/blank option will be added to the top of the lists. This allows a Visitor to leave the default option selected in order to ignore a field if he/she does not want to filter that field.
Expand by Default:
Check this if you want the advanced search area to be expanded when the Visitor first visits this Page, in order to draw attention to it. This prevents the Visitor from having to click the toggle to expand the advanced search. If you check this, the expand by default setting for the browse feature will be disabled because both areas cannot be expanded at the same time.
Layout:
Use this field to define the layout for the advanced search fields. You will want to include a label for each field and then copy a field from the lists above and paste into the layout. You can use a table in order to align multiple fields. You will also want to include a submit button, and optionally a clear button, which you can also copy from the lists above.
If you are using a custom layout to define the HTML for your advanced search fields, and not using this layout field for the presentation, you will still need to include each field in this layout (e.g. {{name: 'example'}}). liveSite uses the fields that are included in this layout field to prepare the advanced search feature. In this case, it is not necessary to enter HTML around the fields, since the HTML will be included in your custom layout. You may simply list the fields in this layout field.
You may add additional properties to any field. The available properties appear below. "name" is the only required property.
class:
Use this to add a CSS class to a field.
Example: {{name: 'example', class: 'example'}}
dynamic:
Set this property to "true" if you want the field to appear as a pick list of values from Submitted Forms. This property is disabled by default. Do not wrap value in quotes.
Example: {{name: 'example', dynamic: true}}
Dynamic fields allow the visitor to easily select values to search for, without having to type a keyword. This is useful for fields that might not be pick lists on the Custom Form (e.g. text box), however you can also use this feature for pick list fields, if you only want actual submitted values to appear as options.
Once the visitor selects a dynamic field, then the options in other dynamic fields will be updated to only contain relevant options. For example, if there are dynamic fields for country & city, then if the visitor selects "United States" for the country, then the city field will be updated to only contain cities in the United States. This helps prevent the visitor from selecting a combination of options that do not have any results.
If the field on the Custom Form contains choices (e.g. pick list, radio button, check box), then the options in the dynamic field will appear in the same order. If there is a submitted value that no longer appears as a choice on the Custom Form, then it will appear at the bottom of the pick list. If the field does not contain choices (e.g. text box), then you can use the "sort_order" property (described below) to set "ascending" or "descending" alphabetical order. "ascending" is the default.
Once a visitor selects a dynamic field, then a clear button will automatically appear to the right of the field. You do not need to enter anything into the layout for this clear button. It will automatically appear. However, if you are using a custom layout then you will need to include a clear button with the appropriate classes.
The options for the dynamic field are prepared in a case-insensitive way. For example, if one Submitted Form contains a value of "Apple" for a field, and a different Submitted Form contains a value of "apple" for the same field, then they will be grouped together as one "Apple" option.
If you want the label and dynamic field to be hidden if there are no relevant options to be shown, then you must surround the label and dynamic field with a container, with a specific class. There might be no relevant options to show if there are no submitted values for a field, or if a visitor selects one dynamic field which results in there being no relevant options for another dynamic field. The container should contain the following class: [page_id]_[field_name]_row. Replace [page_id] with the Form List View Page ID and replace [field_name] with the field name. Please see example below.
<div class="123_country_row">
label and field go here
</div>
You may add this container and class to the layout field on this screen or, if you are using a custom layout, you may add it to your custom layout HTML.
help:
Set this property to "false" to hide format instructions for time fields (e.g. Format: h:mm AM/PM). The available values are "true" and "false". Help is set to "true", by default. Do not wrap value in quotes.
Example: {{name: 'example', help: false}}
label:
Use this to set the label for submit and clear buttons. By default, the submit button label is set to "Search" and the clear button label is set to "Clear".
Example: {{name: 'submit_button', label: 'Submit'}}
name:
Use this to set the name for the field that you want the Visitor to be able to search. This is the only required property.
Example: {{name: 'example'}}
operator:
Use this property to customize the filter for a field. The available operators appear below. "contains" is the default.
For example, if your Form List View is showing a list of apartments and you want Visitors to be able to enter a square footage range that they are interested in, you could enter the following in your layout.
From {{name: 'square_footage', operator: 'is greater than or equal to'}} to {{name: 'square_footage', operator: 'is less than or equal to'}} sq. ft.
size:
Use this to set the size of a field. This property only applies to fields that appear as text boxes and pick lists. For text boxes, the size affects the width of the field. For pick lists, the size affects the height. If this property is not set, then it will use the size value from the Custom Form Field property. Do not wrap value in quotes.
Example: {{name: 'example', size: 40}}
sort_order:
This property is used to set the alphabetical order for dynamic fields. Set it to "ascending" for a-z order or "descending" for z-a order. "ascending" is the default.
Example: {{name: 'example', dynamic: true, sort_order: 'descending'}}
Enable Browse:
Check this to display a pick list that will allow Visitors to browse data by Custom Form Fields. The pick list will contain a list of Custom Form Fields that you may select below. Once the Visitor selects a Custom Form Field, a list of available browse filters will appear in columns in a table. The browse filters that appear are all of the unique values that exist in Submitted Forms for that field. The Visitor can then click on a browse filter in order to filter the Submitted Form results that appear on this Page.
The label for the fields in the pick list comes from the label for the corresponding Custom Form Field. If a colon appears on the end of the label, then it is removed.
The order of the fields in the pick list is defined by the order for the fields in the Custom Form. You will have to reorder the fields in the Custom Form to affect their order in the pick list.
A field will not appear in the pick list if there are no browse filters for that field (i.e. no values appear in Submitted Forms for that field).
Only values for a field that exist in Submitted Forms will appear as browse filters. For example, if there is an option in a pick list field that has not been selected for any Submitted Forms, then it will not appear as a browse filter.
Although you may enable both browse and search, the Visitor must choose between browsing and searching at any given time. The Visitor may not combine browsing with searching.
Expand by Default:
Select a browse field that you want to be selected by default when a Visitor first visits this Page, in order to draw attention to it. This will expand the browse area by default. You may leave this pick list unselected if you do not want the browse feature to be expanded by default. Please be aware that you must also check the corresponding field in the "Select fields" area down below. Also, a value must exist for the selected field in at least one Submitted Form (i.e. the field cannot be left blank in all Submitted Forms if you want this feature to work).
NOTE: If you select an option for this field, the expand by default setting for the advanced search feature will be disabled because both areas cannot be expanded at the same time.
TIP: You also can create a link to this page, using query string parameters, in order to set a browse field and filter by default:
/[page name]?[page id]_browse_field_id=[field id]&[page id]_browse_filter=[filter]
Replace [page name] with the Page name. Replace [page id] with the Page id. You can get the Page id, by editing the page properties and looking in the address bar. Replace [field id] with the Custom Form Field id. You can get the Custom Form Field id by editing the field in the Custom Form and then looking in the address bar. Replace [filter] with the browse filter value.
Select Fields:
Check the fields that you want to include in the browse pick list. Text area fields with rich-text editor enabled and information fields will not appear in the list, because they are not valid browse fields.
The columns field allows you to set the maximum number of columns that you want the browse filters to appear in. If the browse filters tend to be long, then you might want fewer columns, however if the browse filters are short, then you might want more columns. Please be aware that the value you enter for this field is the maximum number of columns, so fewer columns might appear in some situations.
Select the order that you want the browse filters to appear in. "Ascending" orders filters from a-z/0-9, while "descending" orders filters from z-a/9-0. For date fields, "ascending" orders filters from oldest to most recent, while "descending" orders filters from most recent to oldest.
Check the shortcut check box if you want the browse filters for that field to link directly to the Submitted Form on the Form Item View Page instead of refreshing this Form List View Page and showing the result. The shortcut will only be used if there is only one result for the browse filter. You must set a Form Item View on the Edit Page Properties screen for this Form List View Page in order for the shortcut to work.
For "date" and "date & time" fields, you may enter a format for the date. This allows you to customize the way that the date is displayed. The format must follow the syntax for the PHP date format. See examples below.
Examples:
"l, F j, Y \a\t g:i A" for "Friday, May 24, 2013 at 3:00 PM"
"F Y" for "May 2013"
Most of the date characters that PHP supports are supported in this feature. If you want a character to literally appear instead of being converted into a date value, then place a "\" character before it (see example above for "at").
Another benefit of the date format is that it allows you to group date values together. For example, if you have a blog and you want a list of months (with years) to appear in order to create a blog archive, you can simply enter "F Y" and then you will get a list like the following: January 2013, February 2013, March 2013. Your blog form would need to have a "publish date" custom field in order for this to work.
You may leave the format field empty if you just want the default format (e.g. 5/24/2013 3:00 PM).
Show Results by Default:
If you want Submitted Forms to appear in a list on this Page before the Visitor browses or searches, then check this check box. If you leave this field unchecked, then the Visitor will receive a message when they first visit the Page that instructs the Visitor to first browse or search. Once the Visitor browses or searches, then results will appear.
NOTE: Form List View Pages can contain two different Layouts when necessary to support any redesign of the Page. A notice will appear which explains this if you are viewing the Layout in Theme Preview Mode. The following fields are affected by the Page Style Collection:
See Page Styles for more info about Page Style Collections. v2017.1
Form View Directory Page Type displays information about multiple Form List Views on one Page. There is an optional summary area which will show the most recent, most viewed, and most active Submitted Forms. Below the summary area, is a list of all selected Form List Views along with data for each one (i.e. number of Submitted Forms, number of Comments, number of views, last updated time). If you have many forums that use different Custom Forms and Views, this Page Type can be useful for listing all of your forums together on one Page.
Data will only be included for Form List Views that the Visitor has access to. For example, in order for a Visitor to see data for a Form List View on the Form View Directory, the Visitor must have access to view the Form List View Page. Also, if a Form List View has the viewer filter enabled, then the data that appears on the Form View Directory will be customized based on who the Visitor is (e.g. a submitter/watcher will only see his/her Submitted Forms). In conclusion, the list of Submitted Forms in the summary, the list of Form List Views below the summary, and all count data, in all columns, might be different based on who the Visitor is.
The dynamic nature of the Form View Directory allows you to create one Form View Directory that includes Form List Views for many different types of Visitors (e.g. general website Visitors, staff members, etc.). Then, you can place the Form View Directory in a Folder with public access control. Each Visitor will only see data that he/she is allowed to see.
If an included Form List View has special access control requirements, then the Visitor will be asked to login before being able to view the Form View Directory.
Here are the Page Type Properties available to this Page Type:
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