By crbassett on

Greetings,

I have recently launched a website for a theological seminary (http://www.wls.wels.net/). I am starting to work out any minor kinks in my layout, css, etc. The school just wanted to get the site out the door and then have me work on such details. Some of the details have to do with the Drupal configuration too.

Here is my issue. We use the profile module to keep a directory of all the faculty and students. We restrict accounts to only students, faculty, and staff of the seminary. We have no need for the general public to log in to our site at this time.

However, I am finding that when someone searches for a professor or a student and wishes to contact them, the are obviously tempted to click the "contact" tab that appears above the profile. This is fine for on-campus users, but for the anonymous user, they get the message "Please login or register to contact ___." What's more, if an anonymous user clicks "register" they get an access denied page! I realize that this problem has been fixed in Drupal 5.0, namely, the "contact" tab isn't visible to the anonymous user. But we can't upgrade the site to 5.0 yet since a few of the contrib modules we use have not yet been updated. I would love to help, but I am not a programmer...just a graphic designer. :-(

The staff recognizes the danger of spam inherent in allowing anonymous users to use the contact form, but feel that the need to be contacted easily outweighs that danger. So, has anyone used this patch? http://drupal.org/node/58224#comment-174597 Was it successful? Any tips, caveats?

Alternatively, is there perhaps a way to make the "contact" tab invisible to anonymous users and thus remove the temptation and ability to click it? I am sure you all have found that users take the path of least resistance and would click the contact tab instead of creating a new message in their email client using the displayed email address. Of course, the other thing is that once I allow the anonymous users access to the contact tab, when we upgrade to 5.0, that tab will disappear and leave the visitors clamoring about where it went! That is my problem though... :P

Thank you very much for your assistance.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

Christefano-oldaccount’s picture

Christefano-oldaccount commented

I've applied it on the contact modules in Drupal 4.7.2, 4.7.4 and 4.7.5-dev. If you go with the patch, I strongly recommend using the captcha module, too.

As you say, the caveat of using the patch is that you won't be able to upgrade to D5 without losing your patched module's new functionality. I wouldn't worry too much though. Another patch may be available by the time you're ready to upgrade to D5, or you may find that you can update the patch yourself by then.

Thanks for your post. Well written and easy to read.

crbassett’s picture

crbassett commented

Thank you for your fast response. I will give the patch a shot tomorrow when I am in to work on the site. I'll post here with results, just for the sake of other users who might find this post helpful in the future.

ebw’s picture

ebw commented

i started using the contact form with d5-rc1 and within finite time started getting spam. i decided to bag it since what i really wanted was a ticketing system rather than the moral equivalent of a mailto in a form.

my drups are now on d5, and i expect that next week i'll be working on rt+d5 for my solution.

signature left on blank check, reward if found

Grinin’s picture

Grinin commented

They still can't access personal contact forms. I have "access user profiles" as well as "access contact forms" enabled for anonymous as well as authenticated users.

This makes no sense to me... it should be a pretty basic idea no? Anonymous users need to be able to contact site members, without having to register/login.

Feel free to contact me via the contact form on here, or visit my site and you can do the same. Either way, I'm looking for help.

Let me know.

I.T. Consultant by day... Drupal developer all the time.
http://chrisllorca.com