Max Contact acts just like an email message. There's a place for the Subject line, the Message, the Email it gets sent to, etc.

But the significant difference from an ordinary email message is the Nature of Request pull-down menu. When the visitor gets to the Email Contact form, they see this pull-down field called Nature of Request. When they select what is the nature of their request, you can send them an email specific to that Nature of Request.

For example, suppose you setup that Nature of Request pull-down menu to contain:

• About Our Products

• About Our Services

• General Questions and Comments

You can send a different email response for each of these "natures."  Here's how:

You setup the pull-down field with the above lines by creating a text file called sysnature.txt   In this sysnature.txt file, you place one line for each "Nature of Request."  For example, in the above, the sysnature.txt file might contain:

Note that there are two parts of the line, which is tab-delimited. (I.E., there is a TAB character between the two.) The second is the actual text that gets put in the pull-down field called Nature of Request.  The first is the name of a text file which contains the actual response to be sent when a visitor chooses that selection from the pull-down menu. You can create as many Nature of Requests as you like.

Let's look at one of these response text files, say the products text file. It would be named products.txt and might contain the following:

Subject:[NAME] -- Thank you for contacting Max Widgets, Inc.

Thank you for your interest in the products provided by Max Widgets.

Your request is important to us, and we will reply as soon as possible.

Thanks again,

Your Name
www.yourdomain.com

Your Signature Information

 Of course, you can make this text file contain whatever you like. If the Nature of Request is, for example, More Information About Widgets, you could make a text file many pages long, all about your spectacular widgets.

Note the [NAME] tag. This gets filled in with the contents of the Name field from the form, so you can personalize the response email.

This becomes a little clearer when we consider the other email that gets sent when a visitor fills out the form, and presses Send Email Message.

There's another email?  Yes.  It's the one that gets sent to you. You receive an automatic reply whenever a visitor uses the email contact form. After all, that's what a contact form is all about.

You must setup a template text file for this email that gets sent to you. It's called sysyouremail.txt    And the contents of the sysyouremail.txt file can be left at the default, if you like.  Here's what included as the default sysyouremail.txt file:

Subject:Email from Contact Form at www.yourdomain.com

Nature of Email: [NATURE]
Name of Person: [NAME]
Company: [COMPANY]
Website: [URL]
Email: [EMAIL]
Phone: [PHONE]

Subject of Message: [SUBJECT]

Message:
[BODY]

Pretty obvious, yes?  Those tags like [NAME] and [EMAIL] come from the contents of the fields on the form that the visitor filled in. You can use all of those tags in any of the other Nature of Request emails, also, if you really want to personalize things.

Note that both (or all) emails may have the first line begin with the word Subject:

If so, this will be the Subject line of the email that gets sent.  And all the merge tags can be used on the Subject line, too.

To summarize:  1) the visitor fills out the form, 2) they get sent an auto-response according to what you've defined in the sysnature.txt and 3) you receive an email based upon the contents of the sysyouremail.txt

Advanced Usage

Now, let's look at how you can use HTML emails for your auto-responses. And how you can add an extra drop-down box to the Contact Form...