Best way to create forms for publii sites?

Good question, I’ve been investigating the same topic and would be curious of some “best practices” recommendations.

From experience, SurveyMonkey works in a pinch, although you’ll have similar issues with the integration (tip: to get rid of scrollbars, increase the height of whatever element you plug the script/iframe into; sometimes that will end up looking weird and too long though, so there’s no perfect solution).

I’ve been looking at some alternatives for this, each of them with Free tiers, but so far haven’t directly tested any of them:

• https://www.cognitoforms.com/
• https://surveyjs.io/pricing

Looking forward to hearing suggestions from other Publii users!

Hello @Publii-slpa

Thanks for your response.

Unfortunately, Mendix looks far too complex for my skill level. I am not a coder per se. I just know some basic html code and that’s it.

As for what I want to achieve…

Simply, I mostly need forms for lead capture purpose. I build client sites to mostly run paid ad traffic to for lead generation purposes (not ecom).

So I need to be able to build forms to capture certain data.

At the simplest, it would be a contact form asking for their name, email, phone & a text field where they can explain what they want.

In a more complicated situation, it might be a 3 stage form for a real estate agent asking for home address on stage one, property details (bedrooms, bathrooms, etc) on stage 2, and then the final stage would be contact info like name, email, mobile, etc.

Then those form submissions would need to be emailed to me & my client, and in some cases, also send a thankyou email to the lead letting them know we received their enquiry and we’ll be in touch.

GravityForms makes this super-simple to build but I am trying to get away from WP, so not ideal.

[anonymous] wrote:

Good question, I’ve been investigating the same topic and would be curious of some “best practices” recommendations. From experience, SurveyMonkey works in a pinch, although you’ll have similar issues with the integration (tip: to get rid of scrollbars, increase the height of whatever element you plug the script/iframe into; sometimes that will end up looking weird and too long though, so there’s no perfect solution). I’ve been looking at some alternatives for this, each of them with Free tiers, but so far haven’t directly tested any of them: https://www.cognitoforms.com/ https://surveyjs.io/pricing Looking forward to hearing suggestions from other Publii users!

Hi again. I setup a free account with cognito forms and built a super-simple form, embedded it in my contact page, and it seems to work fine.

Early days yet – but it shows promise.

Note: To embed it in the page, I just switched to html edit mode and pasted the raw script code on the page

<script src="https://www.cognitoforms.com/f/seamless.js" data-key="NENddzKQIkkyuw" data-form="1"></script>

It seems to be fine. You can check it out here:

https://leadnurturing.email/contact.html

Note: Publii did seem to wrap the script in paragraph tags, if that makes any difference.

<p>To contact the site admin, fill in the form below and submit it.</p>
<p>You can normally expect to receive a reply in 1 business day.</p>
<p>
<script src="https://www.cognitoforms.com/f/seamless.js" data-key="NENddzKQIkkyuw" data-form="1"></script>
</p>

There was an active discussion regarding email/form on this thread previous:

https://forum.getpublii.com/topic/open-source-form-receiver-and-forwarder/

Perhaps it’s worth a look?

Yep, Paperform works fine!

Thanks all. Problem solved for now. 🙂

I recently discovered https://tally.so

It’s a great alternativeto the expensive TypeForm

[anonymous] wrote:

How do you manage to insert the <iframe> code in a post on Publii?

It works for me only if I put the code in the “custom html > after every post” section

thank you in advance

In the WYSIWYG Editor: Use the Soure Code button and add it there.

In the Block Editor: there should be an HTML block.

Hi Andy,

I used to have some problem trying to embed forms from cognito forms (the iframe embed option), they usually doesn’t work in preview mode, but once published they work. Maybe this is your case too?

Hey Andy!

I ran some tests on my end and I think I may have found a solution:

Make sure you add the JS script in the head (Tools & Plugins > Custom HTML > Head):

// Include the Tally widget script in the <head> section of your page
<script src="https://tally.so/widgets/embed.js"></script>

Hey Andy! Please disregard my earlier reply. I went back to my demo and realized I got a few things wrong. Here are the correct steps:

1. Copy the first “Embed code” found on the Share > Embed Form page:

2. Paste the iframe’s code in the HTML Block (for the Block Editor) or the HTML source code page (for the WYSIWYG Editor). Make sure to add the data-responsive=”false” attribute to the iframe. Often times, the iframes are there but hidden because of the way Publii handles their sizing (see Bob’s comment in another thread and the doc page)

From there, your form should appear.

Video demo: https://i.imgur.com/7gPfbv7.mp4

What the…

Such a simple solution after hours of research! 🤣

Thank you ! Merci ! Candidexmedia ! 🙏

So now, to answer the basic question of this topic 😅, for me Tally remains the best solution for integrating forms.
I also use Netlify Forms for contact forms with a free integrated Recaptcha.