FormBuilder 0.81


We have just released FormBuilder v. 0.81 which comes with a number of great features and improvements.  New features are:

  • Feature: Configured FB to automatically scroll back to the location of the form on the page when submitted.
  • Feature: Enabled ability to add Reset button to form if necessary.
  • Feature: Added page, referrer and optional IP to XML Email module, as well as XML database storage.
  • Feature: Enabled grey list checking based on moderation words found in the WordPress discussion options.
  • Feature: Excessive link checking based on link limits found in the WordPress discussion options.
  • Bug Fix: Allowed editors to export form results as CSV.
  • Code Cleanup: Switch all code to use WordPress native database access model.

We hope you like this new release,.  As always, if you have questions or find bugs not documented in the documentation area or FAQ, feel free to post them in the comments below.  Of course we always like praise too.  :D

You can download the latest edition from WordPress.org.

114 Responses to “FormBuilder 0.81”

2think says:

Hi, nice plugin, used the .80 version. Can you tell me how to manually upgrade to .81? Do I just install over the .80 version?

James says:

Hi 2think,

Yes, just replace the 0.80 files with the ones from 0.81.

James W

laugher says:

Forms work ok but there is no echo, can anyone advise?

James says:

Hi Laughter,

Not sure what you mean by “no echo”.

nice plugin/tool says:

I am having problems getting the thankyoutext page to display.

Even when I could get it to display the formating was wrong. How do I edit the format for the thankyoutext so that it is not just wrapping text? I do not see the style sheet to edit the page.

I appreciate this form. It has many excellent features.

Thank you.

James says:

Hello “nice plugin/tool”,

At this point, any formatting needed for the thankyou text would need to be put in as straight HTML code. There are not currently any thankyou text formatting tools built in.

James W.

Sarah says:

Hello! I have made some minor modifications to the field names and am unable to save the form. Even if I don’t make any changes besides the form name, I cannot save the form. Is this a known bug?

Thanks,
Sarah

Szabolcs says:

Hi,
I seem to have the same problem, like Sarah mentioned.When I am trying to store a new or an updated entry, it just simply misses to update the record and misses to store some fields. Also, when I make a new entry after deleting the buggy one, the same issue occures again.
I am using Wordress on Apache with MySql.
Some help would be apprechiate. Many thanks for your work and efforts.
Szabolcs

James says:

Hi Sarah and Szabolcs,

I’m not sure what would be going on there. Please post the FB and WP versions you’re using, as well as whether you upgraded or installed from new.

Thanks,
James

Szabolcs says:

Hi,

I use a brand new WP installation (Hungarian language) and latest FB.

I thank you too,

Szabolcs

Doc says:

I love this plugin and I use it a fair bit..

However I’ve got one job I’m trying to use it for where I need to format the form a bit differently.. I need to have two columns for the content to sit in..

As far as I know there’s no means to do this with the formbuilder UI – is there a straight-forward manual means of doing this?

James says:

Hi Doc,

At this point, the only way to format the form differently is to use CSS and manipulate the various ID’s and Classes in the code. You should be able to add any custom CSS you create to your theme styles.css file, or to the additional styles file in the FB system.

James W.

Webdesigner says:

Great Plugin, especially with all the options you can tweak, but I cannot get the alternate POST processing script. All I can see is, that the formbuilder redirects to an URL with the extension “#formBuilderCSSIDFormname” instead to the URL I set in the “thankyou” field.

Any help would be appreciated!

James says:

Hi Webdesigner,

I’ll have to check that out. It may have been broken when I made some changes to how the form POSTing worked with this last release.

James W.

James says:

Hi Webdesigner,

In followup to your previous questions about the script redirecting to the alternate POST processing script, it doesn’t actually redirect the visitor. The system actually does a server-to-server post of the data, once it has been validated, and then returns those results to the visitor on the thank-you page. So, if the alternate POST processing script your sending data to responds with any messages, they will be displayed to the visitor on your blog, once the form has been submitted successfully.

Hope this helps,
James W.

Neil Wragg says:

My website is really slow and often doesnt load at all. I keep getting various errors similar to

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in E:\domains\s\swanconsulting.co.uk\user\htdocs\wiki\wp-content\plugins\formbuilder\captcha\CaptchaSecurityImages.php on line 28

James says:

Hi Neil,

Looks like you’re running on a Windows based server and as such I can’t guarantee real great performance from the plugin. It has a bunch of bugs on Windows servers that I haven’t yet been able to track down. My best advice at this point would be to talk to your ISP and see if you can get hosted on a unix environment instead.

Sorry,
James W.

DavyB says:

I think you need some code implemented to be able to delete some/all of the stored XML records, at present to delete old records one needs to bite the bullet and use phpadmin to remove them.

As a feature request could you make it possible to access stored records from the referring write page used to submit the form data.

Is there any way data from the form can be echoed in the auto-response? – eg from a date field

James says:

Hi DavyB,

Good suggestions. The ability to delete records from the DB is already on the future features list.

Not totally understanding your first feature request.

With regard to echoing form values in the autoresponse, you would do this by adding variable names to the autoresponse in the following format:
~FormVariable~

Hope this helps,
James W

Dan says:

When I use the formbuilder plugin I see two identical forms showing up on my page. Anyone else have this problem or know what the problem may be? Thanks!

timoxxl says:

hi,

thanks for the update and the site returning to the form. this was a really fast reaction to my request ;-)

i have another problem. check ou my website. whenever i switch on the formbuilder, the slider on the homepage does not work any more. the big picture should keep switching to the next. but with the formbuilder plugin activated, it does not. any idea?

cheers
timo

James says:

Hi Timoxxl,

Not sure what would be causing this. Could be some CSS conflicts between your theme and the FB styles. That’s where I would start looking.

James W.

Ewan says:

In the FAQ’s it mentions the following:

“You can predefine form field values when creating the forms, and you can pass predefined values to the form in the URL”

I couldn’t find documentation for this? Am I blind as a bat? If so then sorry, but if not can anyone help advise me on how to use this feature?

Many thanks.

James says:

Hi Ewan,

If your form has a field named “Email” you should be able to prepopulate it through the URL using something like…
http://yourdomain.com/form/?Email=yourEmail@yourdomain.com

Hope this helps,
James W.

Hi, I would like to use FormBuilder 0.81 on the new website that I am preparing for my genealogical society. Want to use it as a means to let people subscribe themselves immediately to are meetings etc. after having written a post with an introducing text about the meeting in particular.

Now, is there a way to use the MORE-tag from WordPress in combination with FormBuilder, so that the form will sit beneath the MORE-tag and it will only show up if you click “Continue to read…”.

This doesn’t seem to work right know, unless I’m doing something wrong. I’m using the MORE-tag and it will show, but immediately after the tag, the form shows up too anyway.

James says:

Hi Patrick,

You *should* be able to use the quick tags to put the form on the page where you want it to show up, rather than using the dropdown. To use quicktags, you would put something like [formbuilder:23] in your text where you wanted form # 23 to show up.

More documentation here:
http://truthmedia.com/wordpress/formbuilder/documentation/formbuilding-104/

All the best,
James W.

Hello James

The quicktag is just what I need. I should have looked closer at the documentation myself :-)

Thanks a lot!

Patrick

Neill says:

Hi. Came across FormBuilder and consider it to be absolutely superb.
However, is it possible to personalise the autoresponder further so that it displays information dependant upon what the customer inputs i.e. if I use radio buttons to give the choice of “Plane”, “Boat” or “Train” and the customer chooses “Boat” then the information on the autoresponder would relate to boats – there would be no mention of the planes or trains. Is their a workaround to make this possible? Many thanks. Neill

James says:

Hi Neill,

At this point in time, you cannot switch autoresponses depending on form data, however, you CAN incorporate posted form data into the autoresponse. So, if you had a field named “Transportation” and they choose “Boat”, you could have the autoresponse reply with “Thank you for choosing to take the Boat”. You would do this by using the following in your autoresponse:
“Thank you for choosing to take the ~Transportation~”.

James W.

Neill says:

James, thanks for the quick reply and suggestion. Much appreciated. Neill

Allen says:

How do I get a success url in this form?

James says:

Hi Allen,

Can you elaborate on what you’re looking for? If no followup_url is defined, when the form is posted, it will show the same page they were on before, with the appropriate thankyou text.

James W.

Allen says:

Where do I define the followup url?

ingrid says:

Hi, I totally love the form builder, it’s just what I was looking for! I have a question regarding the personalized response. Is there a way to use variables not filled in in the form (f.i the Result ID which does show up in the database/CSV)? I would like to send users of the form a unique username (which they can use on an other page to sign in). I was thinking of first name with Result ID (there is no way that users can specify a field which I can match to all existing values in database of other users, is there?). I have the feeling that the hidden field might be handy, but I have not found out how to specify a value in this field that is not the same for all users… (but there must be a way no, what is otherwise the use of this hidden field. Any non varying content could be given in in the response message directly then).

Many thanks

Slipon says:

Hey there. I was wondering if you could tell me how to make a checkbox checked by default. I want the check boxes to function like the radio buttons do

Thanks

Patrick Barnes says:

I cannot see any way to set a custom Subject for the email that gets sent from the form. In Form Details the Subject “?” text just says “The subject line on the email you receive from the form.” It would be great if I could create a custom field of type “Email Subject” that would allow me to use it as a variable in the Subject field of Form Details (e.g., ~emailsubject~. Or am I overlooking some way to do this now? I wonder because I don’t see anyone else commenting on this, and I would think that a custom subject line for a contact form would be a standard feature.

Derek Abrams says:

Is there a way to adjust the CAPTCHA font, users are having difficulty deciphering the CAPTCHA letters.

-da-

Derek Abrams says:

Is there a way to change the banner RIBBON color from green? It appears that there is a history with this color thing. I would like to adjust it based on visiting CLASS-B’s specifically for our primary customers.

I found the IMAGES but that would be an ugly fix unless you created a library of colors we could pick from within the ADMIN panel.

-da-

travdo says:

Using the alternate post processing script I get this error:
“Alternate Form Action does NOT look like a valid URL. Please contact the website administrator.”
Hoever the URL I am using is valid and works-
“https://www.leads4000.com/12485/go.ilp?SID=”
Is there a way to override this error and force it to process?

Also really dig your plugin. You should add a donation feature similar to other plugins as I am willing to donate.
Lastly do you do any customization for payment for this plugin?
Thanks

Carlos Perez says:

Your form Builder is great. It works! This is my first website. I’m very new to this. But here goes: Can I, How do I imbed a link in the auto response message. I want to send some freebies to my visitors. Thanks for any help.
Carlos

Joel says:

I had a bit of an issue when I first set it up – forms would not save.

I was receiving the message “ERROR. Your form failed to save.”

When I commented out the line “if(false === $wpdb->update(FORMBUILDER_TABLE_FORMS, $_POST['formbuilder'], array(‘id’=>$form_id))) $message = “ERROR. Your form failed to save.”;” it suddenly started working though.

(Line 76 in formbuilder_admin_pages.inc.php)

Might help if anyone else is getting this message!

If you comment out the error message in the PHP code, it’s perfectly normal that it won’t show up anymore. But by commenting out this line, you also commented out the actual check (“if…”) that this line of code does. So I don’t think it’s a very good idea to leave this line of code out. It’s like removing a stop sign from a crossroad and then concluding that nobody told you to stop the car.

You should try to find out *why* you did get the error message in the first place.

Akash says:

Hi there,

I have one question while using the “export form results to CSV” – is there a way to specify what fields to include and not include when exporting this file?

Right now, I have no need for “Form ID, FormSubject, FormRecipient, IP, Page, and Referrer” – is there any way to not include these fields when I export to CSV?

I did not look into the php files, but I suspect that this is where I would need to do some editing.

Any help would be much appreciated!

-Akash
akashm@sfu.ca

Mike says:

Unfortunately, the windows path problems still exist for the export.

However, the rest of the package is great and works flawlessly. Thanks!

Carlos Perez says:

Can I use HTML in the autreponder?

Allen says:

Still no answer on where and how wed do the follow up url

James says:

@Allen: From http://truthmedia.com/wordpress/formbuilder/documentation/formbuilding-102/
Followup Page
A special field just for indicating a followup url once the form has been submitted. Put the url you want people to be redirected to in the field value and once they have successfully filled out the form they will be sent to this new page.

@ingrid: I’m sorry, I don’t think FB is going to be able to do what you’re looking for. It can only incorporate values into the AutoResponse, that have been posted in using the form.

@Slipon: At this point there is no way to have checkboxes checked by default.

@Patrick Barnes: Great suggestion. I’ll have to keep it in mind for future release.

@Derek Abrams: You should be able to replace the TTF font packaged with FB with another one of your choice. Just replace the current font file with another one of the same name. As for the banner ribbon color, you should be able to adjust everything using CSS. Making changes to the additional_styles.css file should override any default FB color schemes.

@travdo: I’ll have to look into that issue. It may be a bug.

@Carlos Perez: At the moment, the autoresponses are sent as plain text. As such, you can’t create hyperlinked text but you CAN include the actual URL. In many cases, email clients will convert text that looks like a link, into an actual link.

@Joel & Patrick Vanhoucke: I’ve noticed that with some installations and databases, that if you haven’t changed anything on the form, when you click save it fails. Not sure yet on the cause.

@Mike: Thanks for the update. I’ll take a look.

Carlos Perez says:

OK Thank you James. I’m on Hostgator and didn’t want to show that long URL to my public_html directory. I’m going to try changing it to tiny.url or bit.ly; maybe that’ll work .
Thanks again,
Carlos

Slip says:

I do have one additional question. I would like to change the label for the checkbox so that it is above the box instead of to the left of it. I know I can change /* Generic Label Controls */ from float:left to float:top but this changes the labels for everything.

I just want to change the checkbox. How would I accomplish this?

James says:

@Carlos Perez: You should only need to put the URL to the file or page on your site that you want visitors to go to. Example: http://www.yourdomain.com/downloads/file.html

@Slip: Each field is enclosed in a DIV with an id corrosponding to the field name that you gave it. So, if you gave the checkbox a field name like FirstCheckbox, you should be able to manipulate it’s CSS properties by making reference to something like #formBuilderFieldFirstCheckbox. There is a WordPress plugin called FireBug that might help give some hints on what areas of the CSS should be manipulated.

Slipon says:

Thanks for the reply. I am using the CSS provided. I will give firebug a try and see what I can come up with.

flo says:

I have not yet uploaded my files but still developing my site on a local Xampp server. I’ve installed Formbuilder and built a form successfully. The form is not linking to the Formbuilder CSS file and does not display any styling. How can I get the css link to point to the correct path? Where is this set? The generated source code shows:

FORMBUILDER CSS CUSTOMIZATION

link rel=’stylesheet’ href=’http://localhost/mysiteC:/..path to my site/wp-content/plugins/formbuilder/formbuilder_styles.css’ type=’text/css’ media=’all’

James says:

Hi Flo,

Try the latest development version of FB located at WordPress.org
http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/formbuilder.zip

The problem should be fixed in this version. Please let me know if it is not.

James W.

hera says:

hi..
it’s seem great plug in.but i have a problem to publish a form to my html page or my sidebar. for inform i use wp 2.7.1
thank’s for helping me.

James says:

Hi Hera,

To link a form to a page on your WordPress site, simply edit the page and select the appropriate form from the dropdown below the text editing area.
http://truthmedia.com/wordpress/formbuilder/documentation/formbuilding-104/

James W

Schwabby says:

This particular client wants a very long form, I created the form and all of it’s fields but the two comment fields after the drop down menu don’t show up. I have even tried to make it shorter fields, but no luck. Is this a bug? Or do I need to do something differently.
It would also be nice to put the fields side by side, instead of all down a line.

James says:

Hi Schwabby,

I’m not sure what would be causing this problem for you. We have some pretty long forms on our sites, and they don’t have problems being displayed.

As for the multi-column question, this is a feature we may be attempting to implement in the future, but for now is resolved by splitting the form into multiple pages.

James W.

Shannon says:

Is there a way to create multiple check boxes? I need 3 columns with 3 rows of checkboxes.

Thank you.

James says:

Not at this time. Sorry.
James W.

Art Smith says:

In order to make the calendar field useful, I would like to see the display format be mm/dd/yyyy. How do I get that to work right? I’ve tried change date.js to that format, but it doesn’t work.

Art Smith says:

Is there a way I can make the single line fields wider?

James says:

Hey Art,

You would need to do that in the CSS.

James W.

Art Smith says:

I figured out the date issue!

Yaniv says:

hi

the captcha does not work for me…. can you please explain how to use it – insert a captcha field – in a form?

thanks,
Yaniv

Yaniv says:

I insert a captcha field, gave a “name” and a “label” but i can not see the captcha image. also, i see the “label” two times, one below the other and the text field below it all.

James says:

Hi Yaniv,

It is possible that your website host is not able to run the code necessary to display the captcha image.

James W

Tomtids says:

Thanks for this great plugin… I have two questions I’d appreciate your help with.

1) How can i create a group of checkboxes, that the user can select as many as like.
2) How can i make a check in box compulsory, (i.e. a user opt in box). I can’t find that in the required drop down.

Thanks again!

James says:

Hi Tomtids,

At this point, neither of those options are available in FormBuilder.

James W.

Thomas says:

hi,

i want to track successfully filled in forms in formbuilder with google analytics. it seems that analytics cannot track the anker #formBuilderCSSIDRuumlckrufAnfrage.

somebody recommended me, that in the moment the formbuilder confirmation is displayed, i should add the following line to the google tracking dynamically.

pageTracker._trackPageview(“checkout/sucess/”);

i assume i am not the only one trying to track successfully filled in formes with google analytics. would be great if somebody could advice me how to handle this.

thanks a lot
thomas

James says:

Hi Thomas,

You could potentially put the google analytics tracking code into the “ThankYou text” that is displayed when a form is successfully filled out. I’m not certain on the exact code you would use for that, but it should be possible…

James W.

Shannon says:

Is there a way to have both a Follow-up page (for CPA purposes) and an AutoReponder tied to one form?

How would I work that?

Thank you for this great plugin.

Shannon

emmsee says:

Hi James,
I run a sporting club and use FB to handle event entry.
Problem is a team might enter 3 or 4 events during the year, and when they try to enter a second event they receive an error message “Form Problem, You’ve already submitted this data once”.
True they have but not for the current event.
Any clues as to how to get around this?
cheers
emmsee

Ken says:

I really want to use this plugin on my wordpress version 2.7.1 because I really find the features really great however every time I tried to add the new form I created which I correctly customized the fields to a new post either selecting the appropriate form in the dropdown menu below or directly through the code it doesn’t really work. The form doesnt shows up in the page even the submit button.

I would appreciate your assistance. Thank you in advance.

Ken says:

I’m trying to pass the POST data to an alternate POST processing script but it doesn’t appear to be working.

Can standard php code be used in this case? Am I doing something wrong?

if ($_POST['submit']) {
$password = md5($clean[password]);
$query = “SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ‘$clean[username]‘”;
$result = mysql_query($query);
$rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
if ($rows > 0) {
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
if ($password == $row['password']) {
$_SESSION[id] = $row[id];
header(“Location:user/$clean[username]“);
}

Thanks!

Matt says:

Greetings! I’ve installed v0.81 on a new WP site that I’m building and FormBuilder is awesome! Two questions:
1. I have a recipient selection drop down menu with different email addresses of different departments. If I try to put multiple emails for one field value, I get the error “You seemed to have missed or had mistakes in the following: Choose a Department”. Your FAQs state multiple recipients are possible, but maybe that’s not for the drop down menu?
2. Single recipient email selections work perfectly. However, no emails are getting through to the recipient in the FORM CONTROL section! Por que??
Thanks very much!

Yaniv says:

Hi all
Is there any answer to my question?
Thanks
Yaniv

Ton says:

Hi
Great form!

Bus I’ve a question:

The results who are emailed to me are send by ‘WordPress’ (wordpress@domain), not from the domainholdersname.
Is there a way to change this in the right name?

I’ve activated the ‘Form to email’ at the form itself and activated ‘Alternate Email handling’ in GLOBAL OPTIONS.

And: Just an email is send with the results in it, no ‘conformation email’ is send if this Alternate-option is selected.
I choose this option because the results are beter to read in email.

So: How to change the senders address in the email???
Anyone???

Thanx!

Ton says:

Sorry, the conformation email was sent to me but holded by my Postini spam & junk handler. The from this one is also wordpress@domain.
So the question is still open…

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