Email Verification Page Type

The email verification page type is used as a landing page for when a user receives an email asking to verify the user's email address. When at the email verification page, the user enters the password given during the user registration process. If the password matches, the user is is redirected to a configurable location.

A standard email verification page may look like this:

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There is a single main token for the Email Verification Page Type's Content Skin:

  • [[Password]] - The input element where the user's password is entered.

Additionally, the Email Verification Page Type uses one InvalidText token, and three Error tokens. They are:

  • [[PasswordInvalidText]] - This token will be populated if the password that the user has entered is incorrect. 
  • [[PageUsedMessage]] - This token will be populated if the current email verification page has already been used by the user account requesting the page.
  • [[PageExpiredMessage]] - This token will be populated if the email request that generated this email verification page has expired. This expiration timeout is configurable.
  • [[UserIsLocked]] - This token will be populated if the user has been locked. A user may be locked if an attempt to log in using their account details has been repeated too many times within a short duration. This is configurable in the Security Settings section.

All error messages can be customized in the Security settings section of Admin.

An <input type="submit"> should also be present on the page (or another method to submit the form), so that the user may submit the form and verify their email.

Creating an Email Verification Page

To create an email verification page, first a page type must be created. Enter the design-area.png area of Admin and proceed to the Page Types tab. Click Add New Page Type, enter the name of the page type (such as "Email Verification"), and select the base type as Email Verification. Click save-button.png to create the new page type.

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Next, click the pencil pencil-button.png of the new page type to edit it. Enter the skins tab, and enter the Content Skin. Note that although a [[Content]] token is present in the skin by default, a [[Content]] token has no behavior in an Email Verification page type. If you would like an editable content area above or below the content skin, use an editable webbox.

In the content skin you may skin your page as desired. The above example is skinned as the following:

<h1>Email Verification</h1>
<p>Please enter your password to verify your email.</p>
<div>
  <label for="Password">Password:</label><span>[[Password]]</span>
</div>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
<p>
  <ins class="error">[[PasswordInvalidText]]</ins>
  <ins class="error">[[PageUsedMessage]]</ins>
  <ins class="error">[[PageExpiredMessage]]</ins>
  <ins class="error">[[UserIsLocked]]</ins>
</p>

As with all pixelsilk forms, there is no <form> tag, but the is an <input type="submit"> tag present.

Create a Page

Finally, an actual page needs to be created with the Email Verification page type chosen. This page can be named whatever you wish. The URL for this page is what will be generated in the email to the user (see below), and this page will be the actual page that the user visits to verify their email address.

For example, a page named Email Verification could be created under the Home page. The URL for this page would be /email-verification/.

Generally, it is recommended to enable the page, but disable viewing the page in the menu and sitemap.

Form Submit

When the submit button is clicked, either the user will stay on the same page, with error message tokens populated, or they will be logged in and redirected to a configurable URL. The Email Verification page type shares the redirect settings of list sections. To change the redirect location for the email verification page, first enter the [Pages] section, and open the properties [p] for the email verification page. Navigate to the Form Submit tab, and open the properties of Redirect After Submit.

Make sure Redirect to is checked (so that you may edit the value, note that Show item detail page does nothing for an Email Verification page type). Enter the redirect location you would like for the email verification page, then click close-button.png and save-button.png to save your changes.

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Now, when users verify their email address, they will be redirected to the URL which was configured above.

Enabling Email Verification

To enable Email Verification, see the Email Verification section of the User Registration Page Type section.

Configuring Email Verification

There are two aspects to successfully configuring email verification on a Pixelsilk website. Setting the location of the email verification page described above, and configuring the email which is sent to the user.

Associating an Email Verification Page with Email Verification

When a user finishes user registration, they will be sent an email with a link to the Email Verification page type. The URL of the page must be set in the Pixelsilk Admin so that the email will have the correct link address. 

Enter the settings-area.pngarea of Admin and enter the Config tab. Click Add New Setting. For the Name, enter EmailVerificationUrl. For the value, enter the relative URL of the email verification page type that was created above. Click save-button.png to save the new setting.

Configuration Reference

  • EmailVerificationUrl - The relative URL of the page for an Email Verification email to link to, in the [[EmailVerificationUrl]] token.

Setting up an Email Verification Email

Next, the actual email which is sent to the user must be configured. If you have not done so already, see Configuring Default Email Settings to set up defaults required for the Email Verification page type.

To start, enter the settings-area.png area of Admin, and enter the Emails tab. Open the Email Address Verification URL bar. To set up a full email:

  1. Choose the from address for the email. This can either be the default address which was set up above, or a custom email for this specific email.
    2011-02-18_125558.png
  2. Select any CC addresses or BCC addresses that will be included in the email.
    2011-02-18_125744.png
  3. Select a subject for the email:
    2011-02-18_125827.png
  4. Write the body of the email. This is the text that the user will see. The body of the email is full HTML, and all html tags can and should be used (such as <p> tags for paragraphs). There are 5 tokens which are accepted in the body of this email:
    • [[EmailVerificationUrl]] - The URL which was configured in "Associating an Email Verification Page With Email Verification". This link will be specially tailored for the specific user registration event, and should be wrapped in an <a> tag.
    • [[Username]] - The user's username.
    • [[FirstName]] - The user's first name.
    • [[LastName]] - The user's last name.
    • [[EmailAddress]] - The user's email address.
    Note that if any token is used that is not included in this list, then the email sending will fail, and the user will receive an error message when they attempt to register on the site.
    2011-02-18_130546.png
  5. Click save-button.png to save all changes.

Additional Configuration

Additionally, there are several additional configuration settings which can be set for Email Verification. Each is configurable in the settings-area.png, Config area of Admin.

  • PasswordRecoveryUsedMessage - Despite the name, the value of this setting is what will appear in the [[PageUsedMessage]] token on the page when the page has already been used to verify an email.
  • PasswordRecoveryExpiredMessage - Despite the name, the value of this setting is what will appear in the [[PageExpiredMessage]] token on the page, when the page has expired and cannot be used.
  • EmailVerificationExpirationDays - (Default: 2) If set, the number of days before email verification pages will expire.