Creating forms has never been so easy! Create complete forms in just a few steps. One of the many ways in which you can interact with people who visit your website is to get feedback from them through forms. Creating a form from scratch can be a rather difficult, so we've implemented the Form Wizard to make this task a little easier.
Step 1: How do you want to create the new form?
The WYSIWYG Web Builder Form Wizard has 3 methods to create a form:
1. Create a new form based on a template
This option allows you to select a template form, which you can use as the basis for own form.
2. Create a new form from scratch using the wizard Manually insert controls and labels to the form.
3. Create a blank form so you can add controls later
This inserts a blank form to your page with no controls on it. Basically this is the same as manually inserting an empty form area.
Step 2: Select a template form
We've included several ready-to-use forms to get you started. Please take your time to study the properties of each of these form to get an idea how we've implemented them, so you can use this knowledge to create your own forms. For some forms you will need to modify the pre-defined values such as the specified email address or website URL.
There are 2 form processor templates where external websites are used to process the form data.
Before you can make use of the services of these websites you will need to register first!
http://www.formbuddy.com/
http://www.mailmyform.com/
These examples can be useful if your website does not support PHP or any other type of form processing.
Step 3: Add Control to the form
In this step you can insert controls to the form. Each control can have a label which will be displayed in front of the control.
Click Add and select one of the items from the drop down menu to insert a new control. In most cases the wizard will ask you to enter a label name.
To modify the properties of the controls, select it in the list and click Edit to show the control's properties.
You can re-arrange the items using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.
Tip:
Make sure your form contains a Submit button. Without this button the user will not be able to submit the entered data!
Step 4: Where should the data be sent to?
When the user presses Submit, the browser sends the form data to a web server, so we need to specify where the data should be sent to.
One of the possibilities is 'Submit the data to an email address', although this is a very common method, it doesn't work reliably for all visitors to your site. Whether or not a visitor can use this method depends on the mail client installed on their computer. And unfortunately, there's no way to test if that's the case for each of your visitors. We do not recommend using this method!
Instead of using the Submit the data to an email address ("mailto") method, try using a remotely hosted CGI script like PHP, ASP or remote hosted solutions like http://www.formbuddy.com or
http://www.mailmyform.com. These services let you access a CGI script run off of their servers. You build your form as you normally would, but now you select Submit data to a script on an external server and fill in the URL of the remote CGI script. The CGI script translates your form into an email message and sends it on to the address you provide.
Alternatively you can create your own form processor and make the form processor script part of your Web Builder website. In that case select Submit data to a page within your website.
In the tutorial section of our website you can find an example how to implement this using PHP:
http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/forms_php.html
Note:
Some form templates use their own form processor script (usually added as a separate HTML object). In that case please do not change the predefined values unless you know what you are doing!
Templates that use a custom form processor include:
Dictionary lookup Form processor: ASP Form processor: Godaddy Form processor: Tell a friend
Form processor: www.formbuddy.com
Some form template use hidden fields to (fro example) specify an email address or website. Make sure you replace these values with your own information!!! You can change the values of the hidden fields at any time later through the form's properties.
Use Built-in PHP form processor to send data to an email address.
Enable this option if you want to use the built-in form processor.
For more details about this feature in the Form chapter.
Encoding type
The required encoding type depends on the form processor script, so please consult the documentation of the CGI script for more info. In case you have selected a pre-defined form, the correct encoding type will be selected.
Form
A form provides a way you to collect information from the people who view your web pages. A viewer enters data or makes choices among several options and then submits the form. The results can be sent to you by email. If your web server has the right software, you can save the form results in a database.
The Form Area object is a container for FORM objects like buttons, edit boxes and checkboxes.
You can add any standard form object to a form, including single- and multiple-line text fields, check boxes, radio buttons, scrolling lists, and drop-down lists.
You add objects to a form using the Form toolbar (Form Tools).
You must place form objects inside a form to make them work as part of the form.
Browsers display form objects differently, so test your form on all the browsers and platforms you plan to support.