I was really hoping someone has done something similar.

In simple terms, is it possible to allow members to create new content from outside the admin area?

It should be fairly easy to do, just create a controller for it and use the content service to add new content..

I'm doing exactly that on a project like this;

I've created an API controller, that I'm consuming in the front-end by use of javascript to submit the values from the form.

I've implemented a Model class so that everything is wrapped nicely, and then I'm just populating the new item from that model;

Just disregard all the config-stuff, thats just some config-node that I have in the backend to allow editors to control emails, where the content is stored etc.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Web.Http;
using Umbraco.Web.WebApi;
using Umbraco.Core.Models;
using Umbraco.Web;
using MyNameSpace.Umbraco.Classes;
using Umbraco.Core.Logging;

namespace MyNameSpace.Umbraco.Controllers.api
{
    public class ContactFormController : UmbracoApiController
    {
       public ContactModel PostContact(ContactModel model) {

            ContactFormConfiguration conf = new ContactFormConfiguration();
            var homePage = Umbraco.TypedContent(model.PageId).AncestorsOrSelf(1).First(); 
             var confignode = homePage.Children.Where(x => x.ContentType.Alias == "ConfigurationFolder").First();
             if (confignode != null)
             {

                 var contactconfig = confignode.Children.Where(x => x.ContentType.Alias == "ContactFormSettings").First();
                 if (contactconfig != null)
                 {
                     conf.ContactsSectionNode = contactconfig.GetPropertyValue<int>("contactsSectionNode");
                     conf.EmailMessage = contactconfig.GetPropertyValue<string>("emailMessage");
                     conf.EmailSubject = contactconfig.GetPropertyValue<string>("emailSubject");
                     conf.SendToEmail = contactconfig.GetPropertyValue<string>("sendToEmail");
                     //TODO: Add some default values
                 }
             }


            var cs = Services.ContentService;
            int parentId = conf.ContactsSectionNode;//HAS to be here!  
            var content = cs.CreateContent(model.Name, parentId, "contact");

            content.Name = model.Name;
            content.SetValue("name", model.Name);
            content.SetValue("address", model.Address);
            content.SetValue("city", model.City);
            content.SetValue("organisation", model.Organisation);
            content.SetValue("numberOfUsers", model.NumberOfUsers);
            content.SetValue("email", model.Email);
            content.SetValue("offersent", false);
            content.SetValue("language", model.Language);

            cs.SaveAndPublishWithStatus(content);

            model.Id = content.Id;

            if (model.Id != null && model.Id != 0)
            {
                try { 
                //Send mail. 
                    string msg = conf.EmailMessage;
                    msg = msg.Replace("##NAVN##", model.Name);
                    msg = msg.Replace("##ADDRESS##", model.Address);
                    msg = msg.Replace("##CITY##", model.City);
                    msg = msg.Replace("##ORGANISATION##", model.Organisation);
                    msg = msg.Replace("##EMAIL##", model.Email);
                    msg = msg.Replace("##NUMBEROFUSERS##", model.NumberOfUsers);
                    msg = msg.Replace("##LANGUAGE##", model.Language);
                umbraco.library.SendMail("[email protected]", conf.SendToEmail, "Ny entry fra contacts-form", msg, true);
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    LogHelper.Debug<string>(" Send email for new entry in contacts failed: " + e.ToString());
                }
            }
            return model;
        }
    }
}

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