Quick and Dirty Form Builders

This post isn't about Twitter but it did begin with a tweet. I follow lots of nonprofit techies on twitter and am always learning about new applications and software through my colleagues. So when Beth Kanter (if you aren't following her on twitter, you should) asked about formspring.com I checked it out. I hadn't heard of it before, but it got me thinking about the wealth of fast and simple options now available for nonprofits and how making even simple data collection forms used to require contacting some technical volunteer or programmer.

In response to a request for experiences with formspring, Beth received several responses and summed them up concisely in less than 140 characters.


"Seems like folks are using wufoo and google docs for forms - some have used formspring and say it is easy "

So if you just need a short form to collect some basic information these are a few flexible and not too difficult choices. Keep in mind that this is by no means a complete or even necessarily the best in class list. There are of course tons of form creation options out there - just google "easy forms for web site" to see what I mean. If you are looking specifically to do surveys the possibilities continue to expand.

This is just a brief look at the 3 that were mentioned in Beth's tweet and where to find CMS specific options for those using some common open source content management systems. I'd love to hear more about what organizations are using to quick build simple data collection forms on the fly and why.

Simple stand alone forms are useful for things like:

• contact forms
• volunteer or job applications
• surveys
• supporter story or feedback submissions
• temporary campaign petitions & sign-ups
• even event rsvp and registrations

Here is the quick overview:

http://www.formspring.com
Seems super easy to use and has a nice set of options on how you want to receive submission information. They offer SSL submission and even payment integration. Their pricing plan offers 3 free forms with up to 15 fields and 50 saved submissions. If you choose a paid plan, you also get storage space for form user uploads and CAPTCHA to prevent spam entries.

http://wufoo.com
This is the one my friends use and it seems to have been around long enough to have established a pretty good reputation. Their gallery can be a great place for ideas and templates to get you started. You have a paid option for SSL secure forms, paypal integration and spam prevention seems to come with the basic free package as well. The pricing plan offers 3 forms for free with up to 10 fields and 100 submissions per month. Paid accounts also include file storage for user uploads.

google docs based forms (more on how to create)
If your organization already has a google apps account and uses spreadsheets this might be the way to go. It's not quite as simple for the novice but very popular and powerful.

I first found out about this Google feature through a site that went up within a few hours after McCain called for postponing the first debate. Originally it was just a plain google doc based form used as a petition in that first day. Eventually the Demand the Debates site was converted to a more traditional and robust site but the original got quite a response and displayed the speed at which you can deploy a quick campaign with simple tools.

More...
Most content management systems either include contact forms or have installable modules that offer them that are easy to integrate with your site. I wanted to provide a few places to look for easy form creation plug ins if you use one of the following systems, even if you aren't a developer.

Drupal
I've used webform + captcha modules with good results and it was fairly painless to get set up. Customization seems practically unlimited and I will probably use this combination again when the information collected should be kept separate from the main site.

I tried this one out because it was highly rated on drupalmodules.com which is a great resource for sifting through all the modules available from the robust Drupal community.

Joomla
The only form builder I have used in Joomla is perForms and it works pretty well with some convenient reporting features although set up is a bit less than intuitive, its not too difficult. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be maintained for the newer versions of Joomla.

For more up to date options, I am sure you can find something that works for your site in their great extensions library.

WordPress
I've enjoyed using Contact Form 7 on my WordPress sites but there are lots of good options out there. My friend Rowan at Free Flow Data raves about CForms as the pick of the litter with enough powerful features to even be used to create a mini-CRM.

Many of the plug ins labeled as contact forms can do much more - find them in the plug in directory.

And finally a couple of things to keep in mind when using any of these quick and dirty tools to build the forms of your dreams.

• Data accessiblity - how reusable is the data and how easy is it to integrate with your CRM and other systems? Most of the above feature CSV downloads of form data.
  
• SPAM prevention and filtering - is CAPTCHA or other spam prevention available?
• Security - Make double sure you know and are taking all the necessary precautions when dealing with personal information and money from your supporters.

Many thanks to Beth Kanter for the inspiration to put this list together.