Continental Contact

A polished shared contact website for the Continental project ecosystem. The frontend posts contact submissions to /api/contact; the Express backend validates the request and forwards it to a private Discord channel through an incoming webhook.

The Discord webhook URL is never used in frontend code. It must stay in backend environment variables only.

Local Setup

1. Install dependencies:

npm install

2. Create a local environment file:

cp .env.example .env

3. Add your webhook URL to .env:

DISCORD_CONTACT_WEBHOOK_URL=your_discord_webhook_url_here
PORT=3000

4. Start the site:

npm run dev

5. Open:

http://localhost:3000

Creating a Discord Webhook

1. Open Discord and go to the private channel that should receive contact messages.
2. Open channel settings.
3. Go to Integrations.
4. Choose Webhooks.
5. Create a new webhook, name it something like Continental Contact, and copy the webhook URL.
6. Paste that URL into .env as DISCORD_CONTACT_WEBHOOK_URL.

Keep .env private. Do not commit it and do not paste the real webhook URL into README files, frontend JavaScript, HTML, screenshots, or public hosting settings.

How Submissions Work

The contact form sends JSON to:

POST /api/contact

The backend validates:

• project, reason, and message are present
• message is no longer than 3000 characters
• optional email is valid when provided
• hidden honeypot field website is empty
• no more than 3 submissions per IP every 10 minutes

After validation, the backend sends a Discord embed through process.env.DISCORD_CONTACT_WEBHOOK_URL. The payload includes project, reason, email or Not provided, message, timestamp, and a Continental Contact footer.

Project Options

The dropdown includes the required core options plus discovered Continental projects from the local GitHub workspace:

• General
• Continental ID
• Vanguard
• Aegis
• Blueprint
• Continental Studios
• Grimoire
• StepCast
• The Echo Archives
• Minesweeper
• Terra Tread
• Sovereign
• Other

Deployment Notes

For a future host such as contact.continental-hub.com, configure the hosting provider with:

DISCORD_CONTACT_WEBHOOK_URL=<secret webhook URL>
PORT=<provider port, if required>

The frontend should keep using /api/contact so it works on the same origin in local development and production.

This repo now includes the common public site files expected for deployment:

• public/index.html
• public/robots.txt
• public/sitemap.xml
• public/manifest.json
• public/404.html
• public/favicon.png
• public/favicon.svg
• public/privacy.html
• public/terms.html
• public/data.json

Items from the checklist that are intentionally not in this repo:

• index.php or other PHP entrypoints are not needed because the site runs on Express/Node.
• .htaccess is not needed unless you deploy behind Apache.
• SSL/TLS certificates are not stored in the repo; they must be configured on the hosting platform or reverse proxy.

Recent Improvements

• /privacy now serves a dedicated privacy page instead of falling through to the contact page
• the form shows field-level validation errors and accessible error states
• priority actions prefill the form for Security issue and Abuse report
• API responses now include a request ID for support/debugging
• webhook misconfiguration is logged server-side without exposing internal details to end users