Contact the owner issue

[henryv]

[b] V4.1.6 Designer

[b]default/b]




I am logged on as guest and have the ' This Usergroup (in this case guests) can contact the owner' in admin pannel switched to yes.

So now should I, as a guest, be able to send a private mail to the owner by clicking on the envelope.
When I do this the login window pops up.
But, besides this, a form is avaible all the time beneath this and via that form I AM able to send a message without having to log on (and it also arrives). What's wrong here?

[seymourjames +]

Normally the contact form is displayed if you are not logged in and you don't have the contact form when you are logged in. One thing I do in this template though is normally remove the contact owner link when it is a visitor who is not logged in. To me it does not make sense to have people log on if they don't need to with the contact form present on the side.

A bit confused by your question because guests don't normally log on.

[henryv]

Normally the contact form is displayed if you are not logged in and you don't have the contact form when you are logged in. One thing I do in this template though is normally remove the contact owner link when it is a visitor who is not logged in. To me it does not make sense to have people log on if they don't need to with the contact form present on the side.

A bit confused by your question because guests don't normally log on.
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Yes, you'r right. That was my mistake.

Your referred to template. Can you please be a bit more specific on what template and where I have to remove what link without messing up the rest.
Just beginnig to explore this application you see.

Henry

[seymourjames +]

Sure - it is viewlisting/listingextras.tpl or if you are using the other viewlistng template it is viewlisting/listingextras2.tpl

Just replace this


{if $pmon=="Y" && $allowcontact=="Y"}
<span class="contact"><a href="{$smarty.const.URL}/private.php?action=contactowner&view={$view}"> {$smarty.const.LANG_CONTACT_OWNER}</a></span>
{/if}

with this


{if $pmon=="Y" && $allowcontact=="Y"}
{if $smarty.session.username<>'' || $smarty.cookies.username<>""}
<span class="contact"><a href="{$smarty.const.URL}/private.php?action=contactowner&view={$view}" rel="nofollow">{$smarty.const.LANG_CONTACT_OWNER}</a></span>
{/if}
{/if}

[Mike-N-Tosh +]

Originally Posted by henryv

So now should I, as a guest, be able to send a private mail to the owner by clicking on the envelope.
When I do this the login window pops up.

You need to understand that you can't send a private message as a guest, because you don't have an account, because you're not registered. Private messages are connected to an account, so it's not possible to send PM's from a non-existing account.

As far as being able to contact the owner as a guest, that's controlled by the settings in the admin as you said that you have set that to allow contact which is why the "Email" form does show. I for one would advise against that, because that just invites SPAMMERS to contact your sellers with all of their "Buy Viagra", etc. emails. Of course, that is your choice. I'm just saying...

[henryv]

Thanks Mike and Seymour for your replies.

I agree. That 'guestform' invites spammers but on the other hand not every potential buyer (guest) wants to create an account just to contact the seller/owner and not every seller wants an email displayed as there seem to be programs outthere that scan websites for emailadresses as far as I understand.

[seymourjames +]

Try using the captcha module or if spam is really bad, use the recpatcha module (it is FREE) from Eric's website. Yes there are many programs out there for scraping email addresses. However these do not generally have the ability go behind contact forms and instead, usually look for raw emails to harvest.

You can turn the email address off from the admin control panel (user view settings) or you can modify your template - I always delete the link from viewlistings to viewmember pages for example. Then there are no issues of raw emails being shown to scrapers. I also see little need personally to have viewmember pages as the important data as far as I am concerned is on the viewlistings pages. Its kind of repetitive to use viewmember pages without displaying an email.

For example, look at this viewlisting from one of my sites: Charming Stone Property In Gironde . The member name is not linked so a spider will see nothing. The email is turned off too.