Jotform: Collect data on your blog or website
I have been using this Jotform.com site for setting up basic data entry forms. Just sign up and you can get started in minutes. Once you have signed up you get a default form that you can modify. Most of the things are clickable. I just clicked on the title and typed over the new name for my form. I want to collect data from people who are coming to my party.
Individual items of a form are called fields. Click on the first field “First Name” and change it to Name. (HINT: just double click on the words First Name and retype)
I don’t really need Last Name field, I can just delete using the “X” icon on the right.
If you need to accept more kinds of data just drag the items from the Toolbox on the right to your form.
I wanted to know if anyone coming to my party is vegetarian. So I added this field called Vegetarian. The answer field is a drop down list with just two values. Yes or No.
The properties window in the bottom right shows up whenever a field is highlighted. Here I am changing the Options to list two items 1)Yes and 2)No. The user of the form will see
Here I added another field called “Bringing Anything”. This field is of the type TextArea. My friends can type in whatever stuff they are bringing/
On the heading bar towards the right you will see the following buttons. The first one that looks like a floppy disk is the SAVE button. Click on it to save the form.
This button is for viewing the code of the form. Click on it to view the code.
Here is how the code looks like
I can copy this code and paste it on my blogspot blog in a new post. You must remember to change the Post editing to “Edit Html”
This is how the form looks like on the blog.
I tried pasting this on my own Wordpress blog and another website, The form works well.
However it did not work on worpress.com and inside Blackboard learning management system. In such cases you may want to view the form and directly link to the URL of the form.
You can get the URL of the form, if you select the form and then click on the VIEW button on this bar.
The form will pop up in a new window and you can copy the URL from here.
After a few days, you may want to see how many people have filled the form and what they have filled. Again select the form you want and click on the REPORT button.
You will get another page where you can select the specific items needed in your report.
You can even select the form to output an Excel file with your data in it.
Give jotform.com a try. I found it a very useful service and would not even mind paying for it. Feature request: RSS feeds for form results.
Technorati Tags: dataentry, jotform, puppy
August 16th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
heys preetamrai, nice blog you have. well, just noticed that the pictures in this entry have got some ’sizing’ problems. just to let you know. but well, heys keep up the good work. =) useful tutorial.
-lance.
September 5th, 2006 at 9:29 am
Thanks for the info
I’ve just made a form for “Husband Application” for myself *chuckles*
November 2nd, 2006 at 4:04 am
[...] Just look at the titles of articles - Programming your Blog or Website, Collect Data on your Blog or Website, or How readable is your blog or website?. All of these articles convey valuable information, but they also all suggest that a blog and a website are separate entities. I’ve always been frustrated with this perspective. [...]
January 11th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Hi! Very nice site! Thanks you very much! NDn6deYzJcr2
April 21st, 2007 at 8:30 am
Hey,
I love what you’e doing!
Don’t ever change and best of luck.
Raymon W.
July 4th, 2007 at 4:31 am
Very interesting it just helped me creating form for my site. Good work, thanks.