Multiple Forms vs 1 All-Encompassing Form? - forms

I'm writing a YouTube Reply/Comment type wall on my website. This allows users to either post a new comment to the wall, or reply to any existing comment on the wall.
Is it recommended to create a separate form for each reply comment box? Or is it better to just create 1 form on the page that contains all of the input/submit elements, and then just use code to figure out which part of the form the user is submitting?
This question really isn't about this particular application, but just general coding best practices. Thanks!
ps - I will be using jQuery/Ajax

The best thing to do is to use separate forms. Unless you're using ASP.net, in which case you're already inside one giant form.

Related

Creating a webpage using forms

Hi i'm creating a webpage for my school's newspaper/journalism club. to be honest i don't know if any of the club members have much html programming ability and when i finally publish this page, i don't want to have to teach them how to update the page themselves (i will still help i just don't want to have to update the homepage my self) so basically my question is: is there a simple way to create an html form(s) that can create an html webpage? and could it be made so it updates to multiple pages at once. Thanks!
oh also if it is not possible with html or html5 i'd appreciate it if you post which programming language it needs to be done in :)
basically what i want is a form for the title, one for the paragraph, maybe a couple for pictures and i want it to turn out in the same format every time.....
I guess you'd have to look at a CMS (content management system) like Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, ... (there are many many more out there)
These CMS let you create and update your pages in just a few clicks even without basic HTML knowledge!

How to create an open field poll on blogger

I need to create a poll/form with a few questions. The issue is that the possible answers are too varied to be able to predict them and put them as options (eg: "favourite fruit"), so I need it to be an open field option (as in the user can fill in his own answer). Then I need that input to be published on my blogger page/post.
eg:
Favourite color:
Blue
Favourite fruit:
Apple
Is there anyway to do that? I dont know which way to start looking, if in the direction of polls, questionnaires or forms.
Any piece of advice would be much appreciated.
Thank you
Sorry, Blogger doesn't provide any option to directly allow users to publish answers from polls into blog post.
You may use free online form generator websites ( Google Docs Forms , emailmeform and other form generating tools) to get the poll result in your email.
And manually add the data to your blog post.

Best alternative to drupal for small-scale sites

I recently started learning about drupal integration and because I wanted to learn how to create sites that I give to people with no html experience who want to be able to update their site. Through my research I learned that Drupal is the best supported CMS. It really does have a lot of nice features and accomplishes the job, but it almost has too many features for what I want.
I'm assuming there is some kind of open-source software for
I am an aspiring web developer trying to build my portfolio/gain experience. What I've been trying to do is build sites for clients that I can lose complete contact with--so when their store hours change and they have no HTML experience, I get emails about updating their site.
I figure there are three approaches: (tell me if there are more)
I write a php app that allows them to edit their site
I use a CMS (Drupal) to let them edit their site
I write scripts that embed text files formatted with {white-space: pre;}
I've so far implemented each method on 3 different sites, and they all work with drawbacks. I would prefer an open-source alternative to writing my own app for stability/security. Drupal seems more oriented towards allowing multiple users to add content, whereas I only want one user update existing content. The third option works well for computer-literate clients, but anyone who can navigate onto their server to change the file could probably figure out how to update the site without any of these approaches.
To sum up my problem, can anyone tell me the term I am looking for? Content Management System refers to the site framework for sites with a growing number of content posts (correct me if I'm wrong). What is the term for the site framework for editing sites with predefined but editable pages? If you could please tell me that, then I can at least research this question on my own. Otherwise, if you have any advice or solutions, they are much appreciated!
Thanks
user1470887, you've asked a great question. The answer, unfortunately, is that too many of the existing CMS products overlook this use case. It doesn't have an exact name as far as I know.
The term "in-place editing" describes one version of this (user clicks text on web page, block of text becomes a form, user edits contents and presses submit button, new text is sent to webserver and saved, and the form becomes normal text again). But I gather you would be happy with anything that lets them edit-existing but not create-new.
I'm also guessing you don't want to build your own Drupal module or commission one.
I do not know Drupal well enough to know whether there's a Drupal module that meets your needs. I'd recommend a careful search, though, especially if you are already somewhat familiar with Drupal. (Yes, Drupal can seem like too much CMS at times.)
However ... if you can't find a Drupal solution or want an alternative to Drupal, MODX Revolution does have an answer: set it up and then install Bob Ray's NewsPublisher add-on. It will put an "edit" button on pages which a user has the right to edit, but not on pages where they don't have edit rights. (And of course users will only be able to edit the title, body content etc - not the entire page.)
Bob Ray has literally written the book on MODX (MODX: The Official Guide). I was able to successfully adapt NewsPublisher to a project last year similar to what you have described, with predefined pages that the user would only need to edit over time. The latest NewsPublisher version, untested by me, is said to be further improved and can now be styled much more easily using CSS. That should allow you to give your users a customised and consistent interface.
As andmag also notes, MODX is a very flexible system for web developers focused on the presentation layer. It has the best templating system going.
I'll recomend you to try MODX. It gives you big flexibility to run your php or html code.

Twitter/Facebook-like User Tagging In A Rich Textbox/TinyMCE

I'm looking for a little advice as to how to go about this one.
I've got an ASP.NET MVC 3 application written in C# with a form that contains a TinyMCE textbox as its rich text editor.
I've been asked to see if it is possible to add user tagging into the form via the textbox much like Facebook/Twitter with #user and an autocomplete.
I've got a reasonable idea of how I'm going to go about getting the data, but I'm not certain if it's even possible to add the functionality to TinyMCE (if that's where it needs adding).
In short, I'm just after a way of a user being able to start typing #user and have the autocomplete dropdown come up much like on Facebook. Though the piece of the puzzle I'm missing is how to implement it. I've got a rough idea of how it will be pieced together overall, just not how to get it to work within the TinyMCE box or have it start working when # is typed (when not part of an e-mail address too).
Any suggestions?
Twitter has made available their own auto-linking engine, take a look: https://github.com/twitter/twitter-text-js
It is as simple as
// basic extraction
var usernames = twttr.txt.extract_mentioned_screen_names("Mentioning #twitter and #jack")
// usernames == ["twitter", "jack"]

Best Practice creating Forms in Wordpress

I was wondering what is the best practice for creating forms in Wordpress? As a developer I hesitate to use a plugin like CForms, but I can understand why someone would like to use it. In the end I want to know the following:
What is the best practice for creating forms in Wordpress? (Custom HTML/CSS with Javascript and PHP validation or just using a specific aspect of the Wordpress API?)
I don't use any part of the WordPress API for forms. You could automatically grab the name and e-mail address out of the cookie WordPress creates when someone leaves a comment, if you want to try to auto-populate some fields.
An easy way to handle forms is to use Page Templates. That lets you create a new PHP file for a specific page, overriding the default page template of the theme. Then you can simply have the form post to itself and this one page template handles the processing as well.
http://codex.wordpress.org/Pages#Page_Templates
A lot of what's available for WordPress in the way of addins, and what gets a lot of attention, is stuff that I find makes little use if you have programming and general web skills. Almost always they seem to (necessarily) overgeneralize a requirement with a zillion options and configuration requirements because they are first of all designed for non- or barely-programmers.
Just learn the fundamental paradigms, scratch your head and wonder why nothing is consistently abstracted and/or encapsulated, get over it, and use what you already know about php and HTML-based forms. WordPress doesn't add much in the way of either tools or constraints.
I find the Widget feature applies usefully to most everything these days, and Forms is a candidate. But that's my own WordPress viewing prism - YMMV.
What do you mean by "in Wordpress"? Do you just mean placing the form HTML in a Wordpress template? Or storing data collected in the Wordpress DB? If you just want to create a form on your site, there's nothing Wordpress-specific to worry about. I believe there's some special Wordpress data facilities you can use if you're creating a widget or plugin or whatever they're called now. But if you're not, just create the HTML, and point it at a target URL that processes the values and puts them in a DB, Wordpress or otherwise. That target URL could be a separate PHP resource, or the same page. If it's the same page, you just need to include your PHP somewhere in the main Wordpress flow.