1. Create a simple form in Facile Forms. It can ask for anything, but it needs to have a field for the user to input their email (or else the auto respond email will have no where to go!)

2. Once your form is complete, click on the “Manage Forms” button on the upper right hand of your screen. This will bring up a list of all your forms created within Facile Forms.

3. Click on the name of your form. (important: not the title, but the name)

4. Click on the tab “Submit Pieces”

5. Select the “Custom” radio button under the “Begin Submit” section and paste the following code into the box that appears:

// load the standard FacileForms library
$this->execPieceByName(‘ff_InitLib’);

//Sends confirmation e-mail to the visitor

$from = ff_getSubmit(‘cf_name’);
$this->sendMail(
$mosConfig_mailfrom,                // email from name: as in config.php
$mosConfig_fromname,                // email from addres: as in config.php
ff_getSubmit(‘cf_email’),           // email address as filled in by visitor
‘Put Subject of Email Here’,
‘Dear ‘.$from.’,’.nl().nl(). ‘This is where you put your custom message’.nl().nl().
‘This is the last line of your custom message.’
);

6. Click Save & Test your form!

A few notes:

• The code for the script is really finicky. If you put one wrong period or space in there and it will throw a [Parse error: Syntax error, Unexpected T_String...] so be careful. I found it best to copy and paste the code into a text edit document and make my changes there, then copy and paste into the site when you are ready. This will help you keep track of what you have done & when in doubt return to my code provided if you mess up.
• The  string [.nl().] found throughout the code are what create new lines. Put more of them together to create more space, use just one if you want a single line break.
• Be sure that the last line of your message ends with a ‘ and the whole code block ends with a );
• The ['Dear '.$from.','.nl().nl().] code string is what addresses the email. If you did not ask for the users name, this feature will not work.
• The variables used throughout (ie: cf_name) are based on what FacileForms auto generates for the name and email field titles. If you have changed yours to something custom, then you’ll need to update this code accordingly.

Once installed, you should check out the getting-started documents found on their site. They will help you learn the basics.

Troubleshooting

If the info input into the fields of your form are not being recorded you need to make sure the form element (ie: textarea) is above its label (ie: static text/html). Not above it in the graphic sense (how it is viewed on the front end) but rather in the backend of the facile form manager where they list each individual form element.

If the form is not submitting make sure all the form elements are lower case and are different from each other. (ie: cannot have the label and form element share the same name)

On step of the process is doing a pre-install server check to make sure you have all the correct settings. If anything is not right it will appear in red. A common problem with the pre-install is the “Session Save Path” being unwriteable. To change this you will need to gain access to the php.ini file that should be found in the control panel of your site. In most cases the session save path is already in the php.ini file you just need to un-comment it out. (ie: go from “; session.save_path = /tmp” to “session.save_path = /var/tmp”). To un-comment it out, remove the semi-colon found at the beginning of that line, I have made it red here so you can see is clearly.

If you do not have that line in your php.ini file OR you see it and it already is un-commented out, then you will need to call your hosting provider. No matter what the hosting company’s technical support tell you, this is a problem that they have to fix. I have run into a few hosting providers that just don’t know how to help you, and so they say they cannot do that. In fact, they are the ONLY ones who can do it. Ask for their supervisor or technical support manager. Its actually a simple fix for them, its just a permission issue on the session save path directory.

Solution Explanation:

Databases store your password in a encrypted version. Although you know your password to be something like ‘password1′ the database encrypts that into a really long gobley-gook string. When you go to login, the database encrypts your entry and sees if it matches the stored encrypted version on the server, if they match, you are allowed in. For whatever reason, sometimes the database encrypted version of your password changes. I have not figure out how, but it has happened twice to me now. The text version of your password remains the same (ie: password1) but the encrypted database version is no longer the correct encryption. So although you are entering the correct password, you are denied access. If you try to change the password to something else in the ‘configuration.php’ file, you will get a Admin Error 2 on your mambo site, so don’t try that. Follow the steps below to solve the problem:

1. Create a php file at the root of your server. You can name it whatever you want but be sure to keep the .php extension. Place the following code into the file and put your password in between the quotes then save it and load it up to your server.

<?php
print md5(“PlaceYourPasswordHere”);
?>

2. Visit the file in a broswer. (www.yoursite.com/yournewfile.php) Take note of the long string outputed.

3. Login to your PHPmyAdmin. Click on your database that is connected to your  mambo site, then on the side bar loacte the entry titled “mos_users” (it should be about half-way down the page). From there click on the “browse” tab at the top of this window. You should see the list of the users registered for your site. For those of you that have forgotten you username, this screen will show you what it is. Next, click on the pencil icon found to “Administrator” row. Now in the password field, paste in the new string you have created with our new file. Finally, click GO.

4. You should now be able to log into tyour site. Before doing so, clear your cache.

5. IMPORTANT. be sure to delete the password out of the quotes in your new php file. I assume there are some fairy significant security risks involved with displaying your encrypted database password on a non protected php file on your server. I would keep the file on your server in case you need to do this int the future.

Your problem should be fixed!

UPDATE

If the above solution does not work, try this:

Simply login to your database using PHPmyadmin and run the following statement:

update mos_users
set password = md5('newpassword')
where username = 'admin';

I noticed that Mambo automatically adds the URL into the dynamic page titles, which may or may not be what you want. Since every word in the page title is weighted for SEO (the more words you have the less importance each word has), I wanted to remove it. To do that you need to remove the “Site Name” in the Global Configuration. When I removed it it didn’t remove it right away, so I had to go into the configuration.php file found at your site root and remote is there as well in the “$mosConfig_sitename = ”;” section.

And ther you go, custom dynamic page titles without the URL!

1. Find the file “mostlyce.php” on your sever and edit it in a text edit program, the path to find this file on your sever is: /mambots/editors/mostlyce.php (I would save a back up somewhere, in case you mess up)
2. Once the file is open, do a find for the following snipit “tinyMCE.init”, once you find it, place this code somewhere within the brackets: cleanup : “false”,
3. Save this file, and upload to the same place you found it.
4. Login and logout of your admin panel and your done

What follows is a compiliation of all my tips, tricks and solutions I have found over the years. Because Mambo is open source there is no one authority to tell you what to do when something goes wrong. As a result when something does go wrong, you are left hunting and pecking around forums to find your solution. I am by no means a expert when it comes to Mambo, but I have learned a few things over the years that might be able to help some of you out. Feel free to comment if you have any knowledge to add.