[RFC] Contact Page

[Marshalrusty]

At the moment, phpBB installations provide no way for a non-registered user to contact the administrators of the board. In fact, depending on permissions, even a registered user may not be able to PM administrators. There are many cases where getting in touch with an administrator is very important (DMCA notices, problems with registration, etc.). In fact, some countries require contact information to be readily available on websites.

On a personal note, this results in tons of complaints in my inbox. People follow the link from "powered by phpBB" to our contact page and give me an earful about things we have nothing to do with.

Additionally, we currently list the administrator's email address in plaintext on the registration page. I usually end up forwarding complaints to this email address. Needless to say, listing the email address in plaintext is less than ideal.

Suggestion:
1) Create a default contact page and link to it in the footer of each board.
2) The existing email template may be re-used or at least adapted for this page.
3) Add a new configuration option to the ACP to allow administrators to add a custom message above the textbox
4) The header to the email message should make it clear where the email came from
5) Replace the message on the registration page with a link to the contact page

Notes:
1) A CAPTCHA cannot be used on this page due to accessibility issues.

[Oleg]

A ticket had been created for this earlier with some additional details: http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-10073

[naderman]

First version of patch https://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3/pull/210

I haven't implemented a configurable message yet - requires a new table for TEXT configuration. And I have not replaced output of the board_contact email address with links to the contact page yet. Apart from that it should work fine and a Contact us link is available in the footer.

Along the way I refactored the code used for the different email forms and created a phpbb_message class which can be used to send an email and/or jabber message to an arbitrary amount of recipients.

Tests could probably be extended. But they are really needed for the messenger class itself. This code needs functional rather than unit tests. Comments need to be extended too.

[naderman]

Created a ticket for the TEXT column: http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-10202

[keith10456]

Excellent idea! Glad to see this is moving forward.

[Derky]

Needless to say, listing the email address in plaintext is less than ideal.

It's also leaked on the General Error page: Google: intitle:"General Error" "Please notify the board administrator or webmaster"

Notes:
1) A CAPTCHA cannot be used on this page due to accessibility issues.

In fact, banned users should be able to access this page as well. (Banning dynamic IP's happens often)
However, an abuse protection should be added either. This to limit spam and flooding. Perhaps a maximum of one e-mail per 24 hours?

/Edit: So I mean to prevent spammers massively flooding phpBB contact forms, we got enough problems with spam already...

[naim]

1. Bravo!
2. What about protecting the e-mail address with an image (just an image, not a captcha.)
3. Hope that this page will be optional.

[ecwpa]

Or maybe a form to contact them. Even a official twitter link would be usefull this days.

[AmigoJack]

What about protecting the e-mail address with an image (just an image, not a captcha.)

This would eliminate the possibility to copy the address to the clipboard. Or what would you type if you encounter a picture with an ambiguous font typing of [email protected] (in another font type: [email protected])? Bots are mostly not intelligent - I guess they could be outsmarted by something like this already, which still stays selectable, so you can CTRL+C it:

Code: Select all

<span>admin</span><strong>&#x40;</strong><span>site.net</span>

Hope that this page will be optional.

That would be the first time in phpBB history. I'd more think of a permission, so you can set guests to deny accessing that page.

[callumacrae]

outsmarted

It wouldn't work. phpBB has a huge amount of users, they'll just recode their bots to decode it.