Better Contact - About

[admin]

Better Contact gives SMF 2.1.x a more private and controlled way for members, guests, and forum staff to communicate without unnecessarily exposing email addresses.

The idea is simple: keep normal member communication inside SMF through Private Messages, while still giving guests a clean way to contact forum staff and receive an email response.

Main Features:

• PM-first member contact
• Optional hiding of member email links and addresses
• Optional hiding of guest poster email links
• Private Contact Staff form
• Contact Staff link in the forum footer
• Private reply-email storage
• Unique Contact #ID records
• Staff notification through SMF Private Messages
• Native-style Reply by Email PM action
• Server-side email replies through SMF
• Configurable Contact Reply Address
• Live contact status
• Close and reopen contacts
• Original message and latest staff reply shown together
• Theme-friendly language fallback
• Upgrade support from earlier Better Contact / Better Profile Contact builds
• Better SMF-style uninstall/data retention behavior
• Member Privacy

Better Contact can suppress normal member email links and addresses from SMF surfaces that use member context.

Members can continue to contact one another through SMF's native Private Message system without exposing an email address through a public mailto: link.

The account email stored internally by SMF is not deleted or changed. Better Contact controls how that information is presented.

Guest Contact Staff Form

Administrators can enable an optional Contact Staff page.

Guests or members can privately submit:

• Name
• Reply email
• Subject
• Message

The supplied reply email is stored privately in the Better Contact record. It is not placed in the staff PM body and is not displayed publicly.

Once submitted, active administrators receive the message through SMF Private Messages.

Each submission receives its own identifier:

Contact #123

This gives staff a clear record to work with and prevents unrelated contacts from becoming mixed together.

Staff Reply Workflow

Better Contact keeps the staff response workflow inside the forum.

A Better Contact PM includes a native-style Reply by Email action.

Staff click that button, compose their reply inside SMF, and Better Contact sends the message using the forum's configured SMTP/sendmail system.

No external mail client or mailto: link is required.

A forum-controlled Contact Reply Address can be configured under:

Administration → Configuration → Better Contact

If no custom address is entered, Better Contact falls back to the forum webmaster address.

Truthful Delivery Status

Better Contact does not mark a message as replied merely because an email was added to SMF's mail queue.

Staff replies are attempted immediately through SMF's mail system.

The contact is marked Replied only when SMF reports that the send succeeded.

If mail delivery fails, Better Contact leaves the record unchanged and displays an error so staff do not get a false success indication.

Contact Status

Each Better Contact record has a live status:

• New
• The contact has not yet received a successful staff reply.
• Replied
• A staff email reply was successfully sent.
• Closed
• The contact has been closed by staff.

Closed contacts can be reopened if another reply is needed.

The live status appears directly on the associated Private Message, so multiple administrators can see whether another staff member has already responded.

Reply Screen

The internal reply screen shows:

• Contact number
• Current status
• Original contact message
• Most recent staff reply
• Email reply editor
• Send Reply by Email control
• Close or reopen controls
• Return to Private Message button

This keeps the full context of the conversation in one place.

Administration

Better Contact is managed from:

Administration → Configuration → Better Contact

Available settings include:

• Enable Better Contact
• Hide member email links and addresses
• Hide guest poster email links
• Enable Contact Staff form
• Configure Contact Reply Address
• Theme Compatibility

Better Contact includes language fallback behavior designed for custom themes.

If the active theme contains customized Better Contact language strings, those remain authoritative. Missing strings are filled from the default theme language file.

This helps prevent stale or incomplete custom-theme language files from breaking the interface.

Upgrade Compatibility

Better Contact retains the historical Better Profile Contact package ID so earlier development builds upgrade in place rather than installing as a separate MOD.

During upgrade it can migrate old Better Profile Contact settings, remove obsolete hooks, and clean up old package files automatically.

Older Contact Staff Messages

Contact Staff submissions created before the record-based workflow introduced in dev3 did not have a Better Contact record ID.

Those older PMs cannot gain the newer Reply by Email/status workflow retroactively.

New submissions use the complete Better Contact workflow.

Uninstall Behavior

Better Contact follows the Better SMF uninstall standard.

Normal uninstall

• Removes Better Contact hooks
• Removes package files
• Preserves Better Contact settings
• Preserves stored contact records

Uninstall with Package Manager "Remove data" selected

• Removes hooks and files
• Removes Better Contact settings
• Removes legacy Better Profile Contact settings
• Drops the Better Contact contact-record table

This allows the MOD to be removed temporarily without automatically destroying stored contact data.

Compatibility

Better Contact: 0.1.0
SMF: 2.1.x

Release Status

Better Contact 0.1.0 is based directly on the live-tested dev3c code line.

Better Contact 0.1.1 added CAPTCHA for guest submission of Contact Staff form.

The PM-first contact behavior, guest Contact Staff workflow, private reply-address handling, staff email reply system, delivery-status handling, contact statuses, administration controls, theme compatibility, upgrade path, and uninstall behavior have all gone through development testing.