Claire’s Random Thoughts

My search for a good free form processor consisted of a lot of disappointment and uneasiness. Every time I thought I found a good one, there would be either intrusive ads or some kind of limit in functions.

Why do I want a form generator anyway? It’s not safe to post my email on my site these days due to the high level of possible spam, but I would like a way for my visitors to contact me.

Phew, this annoying search and experiment process ended when I discovered formbuddy. Formbuddy allows me to create custom forms asking for whatever information I choose to ask for, and I can place them on my site with a professional look, just as if I had created the form myself. An example of such a form would be the one for my link exchange offer.
Here’s a screenshot if you’re too lazy to click on the link:

I always have all the data emailed to me rather than stored on formbuddy’s servers, but you can also store form submissions on formbuddy’s servers if you don’t like getting so many emails, some of which may be nonsense. I haven’t had a problem with spam yet, but I think it might be possible if somebody is bored enough to submit forms of nonsense.

After the user submits a form, he/she should be directed to any page you specify. This is usually a thank you page or a the same page that the form is placed on. Formbuddy will put a frame on the side with ads and say that the form was their’s, but I guess I can live with that. Only form submitters will see that anyway, so it should not be viewed that frequently
Formbuddy also allows you to store up to 500 forms for free so that you can later modify them or retrieve the code if needed.

How to customize the forms more:
The original form builder only gives you the options of inputting name, e-mail, gender, date of birth, address, country, phone, url, how did you find us, and comments/suggestions. The code generated is also design for a full html page rather than just a section of your page.
My suggestion for further customization is to first just check a few of those boxes and then click generate form. Chances are, you don’t want a full page just for your form, so cut out the top of the html code until and including the tag as well as the and and on the bottom.

How to customize inputs:
If you want the user to input a string, then use copy and paste the section of the code for name input like the one below.

Change the part that says Name: to whatever you want to be displayed, and change the part that says visitor_name to whatever you want to be displayed next to the input string in the email that will be sent to you.
If you would like a radio button input, then I recommend that you modify the Gender code.

original
Just adjust everything similarly to what you would do for the first example.
If you would like a dropdown menu with a few options, then I recommend modifying the how did you find us? code in the same way that you would do to the above two examples. I will skip explaining what to do, because it seems self-explanatory to any experienced webmaster.

Conclusively, formbuddy is one of the better free form generators out there, because it is customizable and appears ad free on your pages that you place forms on. I would definitely recommend it to those who do not have the server capacity to have a form or do not know how to create a form.

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Blog update:
I just removed a whole bunch of links in my links section. Those were from blogs that I was going to exchange links with but were owned by someone who didn’t add me yet. If you are one of these people and still wish to exchange, you must add me and then fill out the link exchange form telling me that you did. After this, I will put you back.