Recently, I needed the ability to create a quick, easily accessible form for this site and as well as other projects. Before this, I knew that there were programs and dedicated services for creating surveys/forms, but most were not free and required an additional registration to access the ability to save or modify forms, plus many had shortcomings.
I remembered/was reintroduced to the form tool of Google Docs through the Spreadsheets area, and I will now be using them for most upcoming projects as they offer:
1. A quickly accessible and embed-able form for multiple purposes – questionnaires, surveys, contact forms, or just general purpose information requests. The form doesn’t interact with your layout/theme like plugins may, and can be alternatively used on a Google-hosted webpage containing the form only.
2. No additional signup required and most people sign in to Google everyday, if you were to utilize another Sharing option that exists. Form can also be emailed.
3. Submissions are automatically added to a data table for easy sorting, which also displays when the form was submitted. You automatically save time as you don’t have to copy/paste information into a different spreadsheet or login to another account. Plus, receiving forms via email can sometimes leave forms amiss, strewn throughout hundreds of other emails or be delayed if a mail server goes down.
4. Forms and the spreadsheet view can be viewed, edited, and taken through the secure (HTTPS) version, making it another reason to create and complete forms through their service.
5. The forms have set the standard for ease of use and accessibility, even offering a confirmation page that the completed form was successfully sent to the recipient.
Best of all, the surveys are free to create and the only limits are associated with the size of the spreadsheets – 10,000 rows or 200,000 cells – quite a hefty amount.
The main reason for the creation of this post is to share news that we have created a “better” way to contact us about submitting themes to be reviewed. On the
On another note about the forms, you can take a survey created in a similar manner that will help improve the site and the services we offer/plan to offer.
Each form/survey is quick and simple to complete. Plus, we have utilized the secure (https) version of each form, even the embedded ones, so you can rest assured that no private/sensitive information is collected besides the information you provide in the forms.
October 6th, 2010 at 10:29 am
you are really a nice webmaster, you have done a wondeful job on this topic!