Installation guide
simpleContact Pro is designed to be easy to use. Follow the steps below and you should be installed in minutes.
If you have any comments, questions or feature suggestions, please contact me. I reply to all messages.
Step 1
This is the one and only tricky bit, so let's get it out of the way...
You should have already ensured that your host has PHP and MySQL support – now it's time to create a database. The exact method of doing this varies between hosting platforms – please consult your host's documentation. If you have installed applications (e.g WordPress) on your website before, you have all the access and know-how you need.
See the minimum requirements forum post for more details.
Step 2
OK, it's easy from here on in!
Open sc-admin/config.php in a text editor. You don't need to be a PHP expert, but you need to set some values here.
$db_name is the name of your MySQL database, and $db_username and $db_password are the user account credentials that simpleContact Pro needs to be able to communicate with your database.
Enter your information between quotemarks like so:
- $db_name = "yourdatabasename";
- $db_username = "yourdatabaseusername";
- $db_password = "yourdatabasepassword";
Simply put, without these details your server will refuse simpleContact Pro's attempt to install its database tables.
You may also want to set values for your SMTP host (for sending emails). If your SMTP host is anything other than “localhost” you should set the following:
- $smtp_host = "yoursmtphost";
If your SMTP port number is not the default 25, you should set the following:
- $smtp_port = yourportnumber;
If your SMTP host requires authentication then you should set the following:
- $smtp_authenticated = true;
- $smtp_username = "yoursmtpusername";
- $smtp_password = "yoursmtppassword";
Please note: The $smtp_authenticated value should not be inside quote marks.
It's fairly likely that you won't need to change the SMTP values...
Step 3
Upload simpleContact Pro to your web server.
I'm a Mac user myself, and recommend Transmit by Panic. On Windows, I hear that SmartFTP is a good choice.
Step 4
Visit either contact.php, list-subscribe.php, list-unsubscribe.php or sc-admin on your web server. simpleContact Pro will install its own database tables.
To administer the system visit sc-admin – simpleContact Pro will know that you are using it for the first time because no admin account exists. You will be asked to create one with a similar form to the standard login (with an additional password confirm field – just to be sure!). Completing this form will log you in.
If you already use simpleContact Lite, this is where you will have the opportunity to upgrade. Just one click, and your settings and data will be imported into simpleContact Pro, ready to use.
Step 5 (optional)
simpleContact Pro can export your messages inbox and mailing list to a CSV file, ready to import into a spreadsheet application or mass mailers like Campaign Monitor. To enable this, set your sc-admin/export folder to be writable. See the setting permissions forum post for instructions.
It's not a big problem if you are unable to make the folder writable. Your data will be written to the browser window, for you to manually paste into a file.
Step 6
Integrating the contact, list subscribe and unsubscribe forms with your website is easy. I suggest that you start by creating the page that you want the form to exist on. Make sure that this file has an extension of .php (not .html) and that the links to it around your site are correct.
Open the sample file (e.g. contact.php) that is supplied with simpleContact Pro in your text editor. You need to copy some code from this page and paste it into your page:
- The links to PHP files at the top of the page, from the opening <?php tag to the closing ?> tag
- Make sure that the charset for your page is UTF-8. The correct way to do this depends on the version of HTML your page is written in. If in doubt, just copy the doctype and charset meta tag from the sample file
- The links to JavaScript files in the head of the HTML
- The entire form code, from the opening <form> tag to the closing </form> tag
You may also want to link to the CSS file, but this is optional...
The file links are relative, so please ensure that they are correct for the location of your page.
Please note: The forms must post to the page they are on. Make sure that the action attribute on the form is correct.
That's all!
You should now find that your form is successfully integrated with your website. Enjoy!