Good form.

May 26, 2006 9:14 AM

How can I easily create web forms?

I'm looking for the simplest way of creating multiple web forms. Some sort of CMS? Open Source? I have been using Dreamweaver to adapt templates styled with CSS but it is infuriating me. Of course, I am no Dreamweaver expert, so perhaps I just need a good tutorial (for v8). In my dreams there would be a drag and drop application that would let me layout the form in exactly the way I want. And be free. Or even pay me.

posted by aisforal to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

It's in beta, but check out Wufoo. It's a drag and drop application that lets you layout forms. I think it's free. Only caveat is that I think the resulting forms are Flash-based (though still fully functional). If that's not a useful format, perhaps the tool can serve as a rapid-prototyper or pre-visualization aid for creating standard HTML forms.
posted by wubbie at 9:21 AM on May 26, 2006

I had good results from The Form Assembly, and the guy who runs the site seems very responsive to any problems.

There's also Jotform.
posted by dmd at 9:36 AM on May 26, 2006

I find Dreamweaver to be very good at creating forms, assuming you're in the design view, and have the Insert toolbar set to forms, you just click on the type of form object you want and it appears, you can then drag it around to where you want it, set a name, and you're done (maybe add a text label as well).

If you want the form to come to your email, you need a form handler, the server your site is on probably has one, for something like formmail (which still seems quite popular) there are a couple of hidden form elements to add, for recipient email address, follow-up (aka thanks, or landing) page, and so on.

What exactly are you doing, and what difficulty are you having? Can we see what you've done already somewhere?
posted by The Monkey at 9:10 PM on May 26, 2006