Hi,

I'm not quite sure how to provide this article-related functionality in Joomla. I'm assuming it'll take some extensions but not sure which ones. Hopefully what I write makes sense and your Joomla brain can point me in the right direction?

Also, to be clear I don't want a blog site, with many ongoing articles, updates, etc. My users don't want it that "complicated". Think of this as more like a simple "homepage creator" website.

1) I'd like to have an Author be able to create an article in the front end (kind of like a "home page") and include a simple contact form (name, email, subject) on the article that will send the contact request to the email address specified by the author of the article. The article creation part is simple but I wasn't sure how to add the ability for the author to specify the email reply address on the front-end. The contact form extensions I've found all require the email address to be set in the back-end. Any suggestions?

2) I'd also like to save the contact form submission in the database when it sends the email. i'd like a permanent record of the contact form request as a backup in case the email gets deleted, etc. This way the author could also see the all requests from the contact form.

3) How can I restrict the number of articles an author can create? I'd like to be able to restrict by time period (i.e, can create only 3 articles per month) and by an absolute number (i.e., the author is allowed to only create 10 new articles in total over any time period)

4) How can I let the author select a keyword and have that be the URL of the article, in addition ot the normal category & section hierarchy? For example, I'd like the article URL to look like this: www.mysite.com/troop-456.htm. I also want the keyword to be unique, so when the author picks the keyword I want Joomla to verify it has not been used on any other articles yet. The "keyword" could have multiple words in it, but it needs to be a single value. I don't want multiple entries in the "keyword" field.

Here is an example of the use case.

Think of Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts. There is a district coordinator for several troops in an area. Each troop leader will be able to create a defined number of articles on the site. One article might serve as the "home page" for the local troop, so I'd like the troop leader to be able to choose the keyword for the URL. I want the article title to be different from the keyword, so that the author is free to change the title but the URL (with keyword) will always be the same. By also using the normal Joomla section & categories the article can also be listed in the usual Joomla category menus, directory, etc. The article will also have a contact form on it, with the mail-to email address is defined by the article author. Each time someone uses the contact form, a record of the contact request is saved in the database and an email is sent.

To summarize, here's the basic requirements:

Typical Joomla article creation features, PLUS:

• Contact form: with the mail-to email address defined by the article author. when the contact reqest is submitted, email is sent to the address specified in the article and a copy is stored in the database.
• Single article keyword, with validation that the keyword is unique. Keyword is used to create the URL for the article, example: www.localboyscouts.org/troop-456.htm Troop-456 is the unique keyword.

Are there extensions to do this? Thanks a lot for your assistance. This is a very useful education website and I've learned a lot just browsing through the forums. It can be hard to ask questions when you "don't know what you don't know" and that's what has made the forums so valuable to me.