Just found this 'forms' service ... FREE!

[rePete]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've been around. I'm restarting my redesign.

In my quest for easy to use forms I have stumbled across:

jotform.com (http://www.jotform.com/)

super easy to use. In my first half hour I built two new forms. You can even get the source and put it on your own page. The only caveat, so far, is that they get the data sent to them, but it's easy enough to retrieve.

I am not affiliated in any way with jotform.

Thought you'd like to know.
God Bless,
(re)Pete Hanratty
Columbus, OH

[JackWolfgang]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I've been around. I'm restarting my redesign.

In my quest for easy to use forms I have stumbled across:

jotform.com (http://www.jotform.com/)

super easy to use. In my first half hour I built two new forms. You can even get the source and put it on your own page. The only caveat, so far, is that they get the data sent to them, but it's easy enough to retrieve.

I am not affiliated in any way with jotform.

Thought you'd like to know.
God Bless,
(re)Pete Hanratty
Columbus, OH

I think I'd be concerned about using this on my church's web site.

[rePete]

elaborate please......

[David Gillaspey]

Hi Pete,

Thanks for making us aware of this new resource.

My opinion: Creating forms (thru this service) is OK, and kinda cool.

But it's the other service the company provides -- "collect data for you" -- that ought to raise a red flag.

(ADDED TO ORIGINAL POST LATER: ) Now that I've viewed their tutorial, it appears that you can copy and paste the generated code into an HTML page that you are working on, on your local hard drive. That's OK. If you only do that, it's a good service, because building forms can be a bit of a pain. Especially writing the Javascript to validate forms. (I hate having to do that ... Javascript is so unforgiving.)

Alternately, you can create a web form that remains on the company's website. User data in this case is stored on JotForm's servers. You can generate reports from the collected data. The ability to generate reports is also kinda cool. But storing your visitor's data on someone else's server? Not a good thing. When the blogosphere grasps the implication of that, there's gonna be some bad press....

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[JackWolfgang]

I think I'd be concerned about using this on my church's web site.

Looking at the source of the form that is presented on the Jot Form site:

<form action="http://www.jotform.com/submit/7681825332" method="POST">

OK, so what is JotForm doing with it behind the scenes? When I click an e-mail form, I expect it to send e-mail off to somewhere. If it's going to store my e-mail address for some other reason, sign me up for a list, it better tell me; or I am going to be upset.

Where's the privacy policy link? There's no expectation that they won't take the information entered into the forms and sell it to third parties.

I didn't sign up for the service, but David says you can save the forms to your hard drive. If you do this, you'd better go through and make sure there are no references to external javascript files. All the javascript needs to be in the form, and you need to understand what it is doing. Using the tool to build the form is cool, but you want to make sure there are no negative implications for your church (just imagine, I sent an e-mail to Pastor Bob and then I started getting spam wanting me to buy medicine from Canada!).

[flutem3]

Hi, All,

I find the software offered on the internet is getting scarier and scarier the more I get into it. In my opinion it is getting more and more difficult to know whether I am getting myself, the website, or our church into some kind of difficulty or not. I think that part of my job as web site editor is to protect the church and its people as well as the rest of the jobs involved. If I do not, who will?

Is there a safe way through or around this swamp? Because of my own monetary situation I like to use freeware when I can. However, it seems to me that a company has to get something out of my using it in order to survive. In cyberspace, I am not certain what these things are. Does anyone else know? Actually, I have also discovered that a person can get into trouble with almost any kind of software...but I am especially suspicious of freeware.

Thoughts and ideas? Thanks!!

Carol

[Websquad]

In my humble opinion, this may be a good tool if used correctly; however, I think it takes a little knowledge of FormMail.cgi to use it safely. Here's what I mean: create the form on the jotform.com site and when you review the form, display the source. Copy all the stuff from the <FORM Action.... > tag through the </FORM> tag, and paste it into the main section of your template (I hope you are using templates now instead of coding stuff from scratch for every new page!).

Replace all the "hidden" field tags with your stuff. For example:

<FORM action="http://yourdomain.org/cgi-sys/FormMail.cgi" method="POST">
<input type=hidden name="subject" value="Registration for FOO">
<input type=hidden name="recipient" value="webmaster@domain.org">
<input type=hidden name="redirect" value="http://domain.com/thanks.shtml">
<input type=hidden name="required" value="LastName,FirstName,NightPhone,EMail">

Make sure you have a "thank you" page as an appropriate target for the redirect, and then test away.

Disclaimer: this works on Linux servers with Apache installed as the web hosting software: your mileage may vary with other environments. I've yet to test this in a Microsoft Server 2003 environment, but will have that opportunity soon since I've taken on another client with a MS host. Obviously, FormMail has to be installed: my hosting provider has a modified version that requires that the recipient be in the source domain; thus, I could not code the recipient as MyName@aol.com ... of course, I use redirects in the cPanal mail program to redirect webmaster@domain.com (or whatever) to the desired final destination.

[Websquad]

Opps ... can I take some of my warm and fussy feelings back: I did a Google search on JotForm and spam .... got this response:

JotForm, on the other hand has generated 141 emails, all but two of which were spam. Some of them were pretty nasty. Now, I raved about the user interface, look, feel etc at JotForm and I still think it's the prettiest, the easiest to set up and so on. But since It's massively increased spam rather than cutting it back, I can't recommend it highly at this time. Maybe the security will improve at some point.

See all the comments here:

http://www.typepadhacks.org/2006/12/the_best_way_to.html

Bottom line: create a temporary redirect on your hosting site for creating JotForm, test it out, copy the code, and delete the temporary redirect.

[rePete]

Bob and all,

Thanks for reviewing the site.

My initial thoughts were to generate the code and ultimately revise it for use on my site using some type of form mailer cgi or php.

I do agree, and thanks for pointing this out, that allowing others access to users information is not good.

Now moving on, I'm interested in captcha to weed out spambots. Anyone know anything about captcha?

Thanks,
(re)Pete Hanratty

[ibda12u]

It does look like an interesting free script. I think the copy and paste to your own website is the best option, plus you can do some additional editing, such as adding a captcha to it. I have a captcha that I use for more of my client sites, but it's built in php. And it does have some limitations, you can see it here http://www.impact-x.net/index.php?page=contact (click the request quite link, and it will pop up) (It's prettier that way).

I'll take a look at how easy it would be to integrate this captcha that I use with a form created from this site.

[ibda12u]

I will say that it's definitely a great start to building forms. You can definitely take the form field names, and shoot the variables via PHP into your own page, that submits the data, into an email or db. very easily. I'd be happy to take a look at a form you create and maybe help take the source and create a php version of it with captcha for ya if you like.

[Websquad]

I just found an interesting response to a query on the JotForm support forum:

http://www.jotform.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=435&highlight=spam

Bottom Line: He's going to add CAPTCHA to a future version. That may well deal with the spam issue, but, of course, there is the privacy issue of having your members personal info in a database (MySQL?) belonging to a third party.

[rePete]

From the jotform forum

http://www.jotform.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41

"Sure. Your privacy is very important for us.
- We do not share or sell any collected data with third parties.
- Deleted data may not necessary removed from the system instantly but will be removed after a buffer period.
- Your member area and data is protected using your login and password and cannot be accessed by anyone else. Except for administrative purposes.
- User and submission IP address and User Agent strings are logged on our server access logs.
- We operate under national and international laws so we will provide data to authorities if it is required by a court order."


(re)Pete

[JackWolfgang]

From the jotform forum

http://www.jotform.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=41

"Sure. Your privacy is very important for us.
- We do not share or sell any collected data with third parties.
- Deleted data may not necessary removed from the system instantly but will be removed after a buffer period.
- Your member area and data is protected using your login and password and cannot be accessed by anyone else. Except for administrative purposes.
- User and submission IP address and User Agent strings are logged on our server access logs.
- We operate under national and international laws so we will provide data to authorities if it is required by a court order."

I would feel warmer and fuzzier if that were a repeat of something linked from their home page.

[David Gillaspey]

Hi, All,

I find the software offered on the internet is getting scarier and scarier the more I get into it. In my opinion it is getting more and more difficult to know whether I am getting myself, the website, or our church into some kind of difficulty or not.Hi Carol,

I didn't want to leave your post unanswered.

First, distinguish between freeware and shareware software, and open-source programs.

The former are usually created by one or a handful of people. Usually, they just want to show off their coding skills (I mean this in a good way), help people by creating a useful tool, and sometimes make a few dollars for their trouble.

Among this class of software, you may very well unintentionally download and install spyware and malware (software created for malicious purposes). Generally, though, if you download this type of software from sites such as shareware.com or tucows.com, you'll be OK. Editors of these sites will keep the bad stuff off (the site), and the software is usually rated by users so you know what's useful and what's not.

Open source software is typically created by a large number of people located around the world who are committed to the security and success of a given software program. (Such software may very well have started life as the brainchild of one person, but then other people joined in helping to develop the software.) The question of security varies by type of program. With GIMP, the image manipulation software, you hardly have to worry about security. With phpBB (as one example of open source software -- forum software in this case) and other open source web-related programs, hackers regularly find new ways to compromise the security of such a program, and so the development community behind this software and like programs regularly has to issue updates to fix security problems. The important thing with such open-source software is to keep up to date with upgrades as much as possible and follow recommendations for closing security gaps. The advantages of using such software generally outweigh the disadvantages of security problems. (Having said that, I would note the some open-source programs gain a reputation for not being very secure, and these you will want to avoid.)

Jotform, the online application being discussed in this thread, is a useful program. The developer no doubt saw a need and is attempting to meet that need. The problem, as members have noted, is that the program's usefulness intersects with privacy concerns in a way that most online applications don't. How so? Most web applications are installed on your OWN server (or hosted web server account), and you manage and are responsible for the data you collect. That's not quite the case with Jotform.

It will be interesting to see how the creator of Jotform will work to increase its usefulness while ensuring that people's private information is protected. Regardless, I am thankful to Pete for sharing the resource with us. It has much potential -- if the creator will address security concerns.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
President
Great Church Websites

[flutem3]

Hi, David,

Thank you for taking time to respond to my post. I appreciate it. I understand the differences in general among freeware, open source, etc. However, you helped me better understand which ones are more risky. That was what I have been concerned about.

I have been in touch of a Filipino who is in Rome. He and his family were sent there as missionaries. And he wants to get a web site up. I sent him information on beginning...including questions like why are you making the website, what are its goals, etc. I hope I have not scared him away!

By the way, if you were going to recommend free software or freeware to edit a web site, what would you or anyone else who is reading this recommend? I would like to check it against what I know...or think I know.

I have not understood the jotform discussions except that it doesn't sound like something I will use. It doesn't sound "safe" which is a relative word, I think.

Who on here uses cPanel and what do you think of it? Thanks! :D

Carol

[JackWolfgang]

David--Perhaps we should break out this thread?

By the way, if you were going to recommend free software or freeware to edit a web site, what would you or anyone else who is reading this recommend? I would like to check it against what I know...or think I know.

Araneae (http://www.ornj.net/araneae/)--For raw (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, and XML--Name comes from Latin for spider
GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/)--For photo/image manipulation
Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/)--For logo design (although I wish I could use it a whole lot better)
Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/)--For audio editing
LAME (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3)--For MP3 Encoding (beware of doing this from Audacity at low bit rates, however)
FileZilla (http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/)--For FTP


Who on here uses cPanel and what do you think of it? Thanks! :D
cPanel is great for administering web domains. I wish I had it on both domains I administer.

[David Gillaspey]

David--Perhaps we should break out this thread?Done. See http://www.greatchurchwebsites.org/forums/showthread.php?t=592.

I copied rather than moved four relevant posts. (All: ) if the subject is of interest, please follow the above link and continue the discussion there.

As for this thread, as Pete suggests, we've probably made our points about Jotform. I won't close the thread for now, however, to allow responses to Pete's posts about captcha.

Sincerely,

David Gillaspey
Forum admin

[JackWolfgang]

Bottom Line: He's going to add CAPTCHA to a future version. That may well deal with the spam issue, but, of course, there is the privacy issue of having your members personal info in a database (MySQL?) belonging to a third party.

I was just reading some interesting stuff on negative CAPTCHAs yesterday on the Joel on Software discussion forums. Basically, you use CSS to hide form fields (properly labelling them for those who have CSS turned off) and if the form field is filled in, then you reject the input as machine generated.

I'll have to Google that later and get some specific links.