| Form2Mail2Story |  |
Form2Mail2Story
What happens when a customer wants to contact you via your website? Many websites have a simple link using mailto:contact@website.com as the href. will utilise a form that posts the fields of the form to the appropriate recipient. At Klixo, we use a system called Form2Mail which posts an email but also stores all the data in our database. Furthermore, this system is backed by an anti-spam system that uses the fantastic Re-Captcha system to prevent form spam.
The Form2Mail system is pretty useful in many respects. The first benefit is that, should the email get 'lost', our customers always have a record of the request.
What happens if you want to send sensitive information? Well, because Klixo's content management system is based upon XML technologies (I hope we extend its use and develop an XRX-based system over the next year) we simply change the XSL file to inform the recipient that sensitive information has been submitted to their site together with a secure link at which to read that information on our website. Very handy!
Form2Mail2Story takes the whole thing a little further. The same process occurs but we modify the XSL such that when they view the Form2Mail at our website an extra button allows them to convert the mail into a story. In Klixo, a story is a small bit of content that can be added anywhere on the website. To add a bit of content on your website you simply create a story and put it where it's needed (we have a variety of means to do this).
How is this useful you may ask? Well, we've just started developing a new website for the Koanga Institute. They want a FAQ page that their customers can add questions to should they not find the answer. We are implementing Form2Mail2Story on the FAQ page.
Say the customer looks at the list of FAQs (all stories on the FAQ page) and doesn't find what they're looking for. Lower down the page a form allows them to pose their own question. They receive an email with the question. They decide whether or not it warrants a response that should go on the website. If it doesn't they simply reply to the email. If it does, they click the link to turn the question into a FAQ. The Klixo story editor opens up with all the pertinent information and they simply write the answer to the question and press the save button. The page is automatically republished (our content management system publishes static pages where appropriate to improve speed of delivery (which boosts search engine rankings) and reliance upon the database) and the FAQ is updated. Simple, easy, efficient. Love it.
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