Website forms

Adding website forms to pages can be, quite frankly, a great pain.

First you have to sort out all your CGI settings, then the process of creating the form itself is a bit of a drag.

The way I learned to make forms was in Dreamweaver, which has a fairly simple interface to create the look of the forms.

Working for a big organisation, I was lucky to have all the CGI stuff sorted out for me, so I didn’t have to engage with the nuts and bolts.

However, you still have to sort the technical bit out … how the info gets from your form into a database or email … and that varies depending on who your hosting service is provided by.

Once it’s all set up, and if you’re only making a few forms, Dreamweaver is fine, but definitely not a solution for newbies.

Website forms: functionality

Most of the time you'll just use website forms for a straightforward 'Contact Us' option somewhere on your website.

You can just add your email address to a page but if you do, brace yourself for lots of spam!

If you require website forms for multiple options ... surveys, competition entry forms, contact us and service sign-ups etc ... you need a flexible solution.

You also need to know that your form gives you the ability to create customised 'Thank you for your submission' pages ... this is usually where the freebies redirect a user to their own website and adverts, the reason I tend to avoid them.

‘Off the peg’ solutions for website forms

If the ‘code it yourself’ option looks too complicated, there are many website form solutions available online.

Most of them - if free - involve some level of advertising or sending a user away from your website, if only temporarily, and you may not wish to do that on a small business website.

It can also look a bit amateurish if your forms are plastered with someone else’s adverts, though sometimes that's the only option if HTML skills are restricted and cost is an issue.

However, here’s a list of four sites that keep popping up whenever you look for a free creation tool for website forms, but there are many, many more available in addition to these:

• wufoo.com … ‘helps you create contact forms, web surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code.‘ Pricing plans start free and go up to $199 per month.
  
• www.freedback.com … ‘ Designed for people who want HTML forms without learning HTML. Try us out before you spend hours banging your head on your keyboard because you can’t get it to work. You have more important things to do with your time.’ Pricing plans start free and go up to $39 per month.
  
• www.zoho.com … ‘Zoho Creator’s easy to use Web Form Builder helps you quickly create web forms to suit your needs. All you have to do is just drag-and drop the required fields onto your web form. No Programming skills required!’ Free for personal use, from $5 per user for business use.
  
• www.mycontactform.com … ‘Our easy to use online wizard quickly builds the form for you. It will prompt you for all the information it needs in an easy step-by-step process. All you have to do is copy and paste the html we give you onto your site.’ Free with limits on number of forms created, or $29.99 per year.

Website forms - the final solution?

My ideal solution for website forms is:

• Free, but if not free, its price is capped
• Fully customisable
• Easy to create templated forms that can easily be adapted and reused when required, possibly many times.
• Offers the option of email and/or database responses
• Offers the option of including Paypal payments easily within the form

The solution I’ve settled on for now on the majority of my own websites is PHP Forms Pro for which I had to pay - wait for it - $99.95!

There is a cheaper $29.95 version available, but I wanted the full functionality of the Pro version which allows me to bolt Paypal payments and Captcha authentication into my forms.

Website forms were causing me so many problems, and the solutions are so time-consuming, I indulged myself on a bit of kit that would speed up the process.

One other thing about this software by the way. I had some problems with installation, but I got a great response from their customer services people and was very happy when they sorted out my difficulties.

I get on extremely well with this software and use it frequently to create competition entry forms with multiple choice questions built in.

However I appreciate that not everybody will welcome that level of expense and I must flag up that although customer support was excellent, this software does use PHP and therefore requires MySQL database installation.

If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, leave well alone and opt for the four free or mid-price options earlier on the page.

One more website forms option

I've got more than 10 other websites in addition to this one, and they've all been built using a combination of HTML, content management systems and blogging software.

For this website I'm using a product called Site Build It! which has full forms functionality built in as part of the price.

It's simple to use, has Captcha authentication, and gives me all the options that I need.

You can see examples of the forms in action on my 'Contact me' page as well as my 'Webmaster Services' sign-up form and the 'Affiliate Marketing tips' sign-up form ... scroll to the bottom of the page to view the forms.

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