aiContactSafe 
Version
2.0.21.stable (last update on Apr 16, 2013)
Rating
Compatibility
Reviews
423
License
GPLv2 or later
Non-Commercial
Type
Date Added
8 April 2009
An AJAX driven Joomla! 1.5.x component to place a contact form anywhere on your web page with any number of custom fields of different types, including attachments.
In the component pack you also get:
- mod_aiContactSafe : a modul to display the contact form in any position of your template
- plg_aiContactSafeForm : a plugin to place the contact form in an article.
- plg_aiContactSafeLink a plugin to place a link to the contact form in an article.
You can install and/or upgrade any of them from the Control Panel of aiContactSafe and see more information about all of them in the articles of algisinfo.com.
Some of the features of aiContactSafe are :
- CAPTCHA with the possibility to specify code words for each language or random strings, easily integrated in your design by settings the colors and background color to use
- profiles ( multiple forms with different custom fields )
- unlimited custom fields of different types ( Textbox, Checkbox, Checkbox list, Combobox, Radio list, Editbox, Date, Email, Email list, Hidden, Separator, Joomla contact, File )
- add a prefix or suffix to the field
- redirect to specified page when the message is successfully sent
- any number of attachments working with or without AJAX
- SEF support through ARTIO JoomSEF or sh404SEF, or you can use the Joomla's native SEF
- multilingual support ( language files & Joom!Fish )
- language files for English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Hungarian, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Serbian (Cyrillic), Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian ( some not completed )
- specify contact information with a WYSIWYG editor
- detailed instructions for each administration page in English ( and some of the translation mentioned above )
- block users by IP
- block messages that contain words from a list you can define
- automatically ban IP that sends messages with blocked words in a specified period of time
- record the messages in the database with the IP from which they've been sent ( can be disabled from Control Panel )
- extended configuration capabilities
- MVC architecture
- email templates
- order the fields for each profile
This extension is simply great! I wanted to express all my congratulations to the authors, I started lots of coding then I discovered that out there aiContactSafe exists and it does all what I wanted and more, Captcha, HTML email, validation, custom fields, layout editing. Really beautiful!
I just want to report some very little issues:
1) When editing a profile, in the "Contact information" (that with the WYSIWYG editor) I added a table with border=0, when saved it puts my border to 1, no matter if I change it again
2) Why the hell there is a "Copy" button for profiles and no "Copy" button for fields?? It should be very useful!!
3) The Italian translation should need some corrections..."Area del messaggio" is "Message area" that is completely misunderstanding for "textbox" or "textfield"... may I help for it?
4) If the form is too big and it uses ajax to submit...when you press the Send button (after loading gif disappears) user doesn't see anything because the message "Email sent!" is on the top. I used jQuery scrollTo to have nice scroll up effect to see the message....may I help for it?
Anyway these are very little and silly issues, this extension in PERFECT
I just want to report some very little issues:
1) When editing a profile, in the "Contact information" (that with the WYSIWYG editor) I added a table with border=0, when saved it puts my border to 1, no matter if I change it again
2) Why the hell there is a "Copy" button for profiles and no "Copy" button for fields?? It should be very useful!!
3) The Italian translation should need some corrections..."Area del messaggio" is "Message area" that is completely misunderstanding for "textbox" or "textfield"... may I help for it?
4) If the form is too big and it uses ajax to submit...when you press the Send button (after loading gif disappears) user doesn't see anything because the message "Email sent!" is on the top. I used jQuery scrollTo to have nice scroll up effect to see the message....may I help for it?
Anyway these are very little and silly issues, this extension in PERFECT
Like many Joomla users I needed a good, yet simple to use form creation extension. I tried many free and some commercial products, but most of them were either too simple or required a completely non-human mind set to comprehend.
aiContactSafe has a very logical structure, easy to use and functionally close to some of the most expensive commercial products.
Forms could be used "as-is" or embedded within an article or a module, most field types supported (file upload is absolutely "a must" for me). Validation rules and style sheets are customizable. What more do you need?
The support is excellent, I had to contact the author twice in the last 6 months and both times he was very helpful, replying literally within an hour and walking through problems with me (those were actually hosting-related problems).
I can recommend this extension to anyone without hesitation. Great product!
Konstantin
aiContactSafe has a very logical structure, easy to use and functionally close to some of the most expensive commercial products.
Forms could be used "as-is" or embedded within an article or a module, most field types supported (file upload is absolutely "a must" for me). Validation rules and style sheets are customizable. What more do you need?
The support is excellent, I had to contact the author twice in the last 6 months and both times he was very helpful, replying literally within an hour and walking through problems with me (those were actually hosting-related problems).
I can recommend this extension to anyone without hesitation. Great product!
Konstantin
I use this module on several of my pages, and it definitely delivers the goods. I've used it for some one-line forms as well as creating complete 20-field size forms. There are many options for different kinds of fields, so you can really use this module for almost anything.
Developer support is GREAT, especially for a free extension. However, maybe in the future he won't need to answer so many questions. Some styling can only be done deep in CSS. Each updated version makes editing and customization easier. Overall, this is a great tool!
Developer support is GREAT, especially for a free extension. However, maybe in the future he won't need to answer so many questions. Some styling can only be done deep in CSS. Each updated version makes editing and customization easier. Overall, this is a great tool!
A very good component. As the author says, the component is doing a lot and offering considerable flexibility. This usually comes at a price of increasing the complexity of use. However, the help text provided for each field is very helpful and the author achieves an excellent balance between flexibility and complexity. Complete beginners to joomla might struggle but that isn't the fault of this component; joomla itself is complex and requires some effort to get to grips with all its features. The author has done a great job. I don't like the built in captcha and I have installed the multiple captcha engine; however i would like to use yet another captcha and would really like to integrate mine with it. maybe a project for me when i get time. I might even make a paypal donation I am so pleased with it!
First and foremost the component was not intuitive and I found it overly complicated.
Second, while testing, I discovered that the form I was developing was automatically placed on every page of the website! Wow was I surprised by that.
Third, when I could not remove the form quickly from the live pages, I uninstalled the component and CRASHED THE ENTIRE SITE (the reason i rated it so low).
It looks like a great product, but it was just too much work to get a simple contact form with a couple of extra fields.
Second, while testing, I discovered that the form I was developing was automatically placed on every page of the website! Wow was I surprised by that.
Third, when I could not remove the form quickly from the live pages, I uninstalled the component and CRASHED THE ENTIRE SITE (the reason i rated it so low).
It looks like a great product, but it was just too much work to get a simple contact form with a couple of extra fields.
Owner's reply
Considering all the things the extension is doing of course is not that simple to use, although, as you could see on the other reviews is not that complicated.
The form is displayed on all the pages if the module is installed. It IS NOT installed by default, so you installed it from the control panel of the component. Maybe you should read the instructions before pressing buttons that you don't understand what they do.
The problem on removal is also generated by you activating the module and not remove it after you remove the component.
A simple question on the support forum would had fixed both this problem in less then 30 seconds. You chose to post this review instead. Thank you. :(
I love this component! It's exactly what I've been looking for.
Some of the features I love that I was surprised to find in a free extension:
- View & and reply to any messages right from the back end of your joomla site, without even using an email system! THIS is a big deal for me! You don't even need to specify an email address that receives mail to get or respond to a customer's message. (However, when a customer responds to your response, I'm not sure how that's handled.)
- Built in customizable captcha - You can specify number of letters, random or words, colors and more. You can also use third party captcha.
- Advanced field editor and customization - you can add any kind of field you want, and customize it down to the detail.
- Unlimited number of contact forms and purposes. You can create as many contact forms that send messages anywhere you want, and use any number of custom fields in them.
- Built in email template and css editors. You can customize the Form CSS and Email Template that your email arrives in, right from the form creation page.
- Display your form by page (menu item) or in a module.
- Accept email attachements via the form
- Detailed, easy to understand tooltips and instructions. This was nice, because there's so many other extensions out there missing tooltips or with poorly written tooltips.
In a nutshell, this extension allows you to create any kind of form you want, and specify every detail, or specify NOT to use any detail. It's amazingly robust and complete.
Kudos!
-Troy
Some of the features I love that I was surprised to find in a free extension:
- View & and reply to any messages right from the back end of your joomla site, without even using an email system! THIS is a big deal for me! You don't even need to specify an email address that receives mail to get or respond to a customer's message. (However, when a customer responds to your response, I'm not sure how that's handled.)
- Built in customizable captcha - You can specify number of letters, random or words, colors and more. You can also use third party captcha.
- Advanced field editor and customization - you can add any kind of field you want, and customize it down to the detail.
- Unlimited number of contact forms and purposes. You can create as many contact forms that send messages anywhere you want, and use any number of custom fields in them.
- Built in email template and css editors. You can customize the Form CSS and Email Template that your email arrives in, right from the form creation page.
- Display your form by page (menu item) or in a module.
- Accept email attachements via the form
- Detailed, easy to understand tooltips and instructions. This was nice, because there's so many other extensions out there missing tooltips or with poorly written tooltips.
In a nutshell, this extension allows you to create any kind of form you want, and specify every detail, or specify NOT to use any detail. It's amazingly robust and complete.
Kudos!
-Troy
This is a really great program & is an easy & fast way to get a nice-looking form with your own custom fields into Joomla (without ANY programming/design skills), plus even has the added benefit of storing the emails received via it's forms (...so if someone sent me an email 2 months ago via aiContactSafe's form, a copy is stored within the component... this is also an easy way of checking the mail each day without having to open up an email program or log into CPanel etc... & you can reply to them from aiContacSafe component, too)
Lots of settings & configurations, but don't let that put you off if you're a newbie - instructions are provided in the component configuration pages, & support appears to be excellent on the forum, too (Note: we had a problem of the Captcha not displaying due conflict with swMenuPro - so if you use swMenuPro you may need to disable it just on the aiContactSafe form page). Many thanks to the developers for providing this to the community - Regards, KB
Lots of settings & configurations, but don't let that put you off if you're a newbie - instructions are provided in the component configuration pages, & support appears to be excellent on the forum, too (Note: we had a problem of the Captcha not displaying due conflict with swMenuPro - so if you use swMenuPro you may need to disable it just on the aiContactSafe form page). Many thanks to the developers for providing this to the community - Regards, KB
Wonderfully intuitive extension. Very easy to use and good documentation. Thanks you continuing to develop this extension.
I have used this in a couple of my websites with absolutely no problems.
Then I installed it on another website and the captcha did not work at all. Later I found out that it was due to a javascript issue. I found out the template that it worked with and made the component to use this new javascript library which worked fine.
Then I installed it on another website and the captcha did not work at all. Later I found out that it was due to a javascript issue. I found out the template that it worked with and made the component to use this new javascript library which worked fine.
Really good component.
Works great out of the box. Easy to configure and use.
Since it is already so good compare to others (paid and free ones), i will only make little/unimportant comment.
In the admin interface, i would simply use the default Joomla! icons for: new, publish, delete etc. So it looks the same. Makes it visually easier as any heavy Joomla! admin knows these icons.
The text area where you can enter your css or html template should be wider and taller.
it's just for user friendliness. That's all i have to say cause the rest is simply working fine!
Works great out of the box. Easy to configure and use.
Since it is already so good compare to others (paid and free ones), i will only make little/unimportant comment.
In the admin interface, i would simply use the default Joomla! icons for: new, publish, delete etc. So it looks the same. Makes it visually easier as any heavy Joomla! admin knows these icons.
The text area where you can enter your css or html template should be wider and taller.
it's just for user friendliness. That's all i have to say cause the rest is simply working fine!
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