WordPress Wednesday: Formstack Web Form Plugin

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 20:42:00 GMT

Welcome to another edition of WordPress Wednesday at Website Magazine.

Each week our editors profile a WordPress plugin they believe provides unparalelled value to WordPress blog operators and administrators. This week, let's take a look at the Formstack WordPress plugin.

One of the benefits of having a website or weblog for a company is that it carries with it the ability to increase interaction and engagement with your audience. As greater demands are placed on Internet marketers (and weblog administrators) to show return on their promotional efforts (like the development of content), collecting information from site visitors is fast becoming a crucial. To do that you will need to have a data collection strategy and the form you use to collect information will be taking center stage. Fortunately for WordPress bloggers, several form plugins exist to make the process about as simple as it can get. case in point - Formstack.

Formstack's Web Form plugin (which is free - non-commercial) enables you to embed a Formstack form into your sidebar, posts, or pages. Users can create far more than just standard contact forms. Thanks to a bevy of third-party integrations, contact forms can connect with payment services like PayPal, email services like MailChimp, or CRM services like Salesforce.

The Formstack plugin adds a button to the TinyMCE editor that allows you to select the Formstack web form you wish to embed. Once the form of your choice is selected, a shortcode will be inserted into the editor, which will be converted to the selected form once your page or post is rendered. This plugin supports the following shortcodes [Formstack], [formstack], and [fs].

The plugin has only been downloaded a handful of times (just over 150 times) at WordPress but it was only released September 13th, 2010. You'll need a Formstack account to use the plugin but if you are only interested in testing out the plugin there is a free option available which provides up to three forms with 10 fields per form and fifty saved entries. If you're looking into new ways to acquire information from users and run a WordPress blog, Formstack is one of the premier to collect and manage data.

Top WordPress Contact Form Plugins

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:15:00 GMT

You'll never convert anyone from a browser to a buyer if they can't contact you! While there are loads of online form providers (I typically recommend FormSpring and Wufoo), there are lots of ways to collect user data. Here are the top five WordPress contact form plugins. Did we miss one? Let us know by commenting below.

Contact Form 7: One of the best form plugins available. Downloaded nearly 600,000 times (nearly 5,000 daily), Contact Form 7 is a powreful plugin which enables for the creation and management of multiple contact forms. The plugin supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and more.

SimpleModal Contact Form (SMCF): An Ajax powered modal contact form, SMCF utilizes the jQuery JavaScript library and the SimpleModal jQuery plugin. Options for including certain form elements (such as a Subject field and "send a copy" option for senders) are available. All time downloads for SMCF are just under 18,000.

Enhanced WP Contact Form: Joost de Valk's enhanced Wordpress contact form is elegant, even in its simplicity. Downloaded just over 35,000 times, features include excellent spam protection, displays referrer information for the person contact you, and an option for users to send themselves a copy of the message.

MM Forms: One of the most underrated WP form plugins available. Feature rich is an understatement. Features include field creator, CAPTCHA prevention, Akismet SPAM filtering, HTML layout, customized forms and unlimited contact forms. Downloaded just under 10,000 times, this one's a gem.

Visitor Contact Forms: Certainly the best looking form available of those listed, to say the Visitor Contact Form plugin is "stylish" is a complete disservice. Key features of the plugin include geocoding, CAPTCHA prevention, auto-responder, contact manager, twitter follow and skype status and even Google Maps integration.

'Net Features : contact form plugins

WordPress Wednesday: Formstack Web Form Plugin

Top WordPress Contact Form Plugins