Cat’s in Great Form
Cat Morley isn’t only a supreme designer. She is one curious Cat, for sure. Each week at Tuesday Open Comments Night, she leaves a link that leads to a uselful site or article for us — one she’s found while she’s been surfing. Often during the week she’ll return to shoot me something else she’s discovered. This one, Cat sent for two friends of Successful Blog, Kean and Joe in hopes that they might find it the answer to their quest for a contact form on their blogs.
Great Find: Wufoo
Permalink: http://wufoo.com/
Audience/Topic: Bloggers, small-business owners
Content: Wufoo was released to the public in July 2006. It’s a friendly form-building program that allows users to quickly create a mailing list, a contact form, a marketing survey or even a complete customer management system. Here’s a list of what you can build on their server.
Contact Form
Mailing List
Survey
Job Application
Workshop Registration
Event Calendar
Account Management
Customer Management
Bug Tracker
Invitations / RSVP
Online Orders
Wedding Planner
Address Book
Home Finances
Classifieds
Personal Journal
Quizzes / Tests
Media Collection
Adding class to the picture, Wufoo also provides the power to build a theme for all of your forms and reports. I signed up and made this lovely contact form.
Wufoo provides the code I need to send the answers to the Wufoo server. It was free to make this form and get the code. I would need a $9 subscription to use their server to collect the data. It might tricky figuring out how to use it without a Wufoo subscription on a different server. However, other forms don’t require such a relationship.
You can make three forms for free or buy in a variety of subscription levels — $9/month, $24/month, $69/month, and $199/month. Take the time to check this out. It could be just what you need to add that last dash of professionalism to your business and your brand. To find out more, click the Wufoo logo.
Thanks, Cat Morley, for another Great Find.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Related Articles
Great Find: Notebook UP
Great Find: 2 Standalone Trackback Tools
Great Find: Free Blogspot Templates
Great Finds: Over 875 Free WordPress Themes
Glad to be of help Liz. Hopefully this will be just what they need, or bring out advice from others.
Hi Cat,
I sure had fun playing with it. The subscription doesn’t seem outrageously for the value that you get. It’s a nice package of features. I hope folks check it out.
Thanks again for your research. You’re keeper, you know. π
THANKYOU!!!!!!!! Sooo Much! Wow this is awesome, thanks Cat for letting us know.
-Kean
Hi Kean,
Always keep looking and you’ll find what you’re looking for. Bloggers are very helpful people. π
Glad you’re happy.
Kean,
it was my pleasure. I’m a resources hound so when I do stumble across something, I share if it’s relevant.
And Liz, thanks again π
Cat,
You did all of the work, I was only the messenger. π
There’s a more recent and detailed review of Wufoo, including a live data-entry forms and several screen captures, plus links to other AJAXified formbuilders at http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/wufoo-challenges-infopath-for-form.html.
Thanks Roger, especially for including the link. Do you work at Wufoo? If you do, I’d love to talk to you by email.
I don’t work at Wufoo; I’m a .NET developer, book writer, and magazine columnist. My interest in Web-based form-building tools relates to Microsoft’s current emphasis on Windows Live Whatever and how Access 2007+ fits into the picture outlined in Ray Ozzie’s “Internet Service Disruption” Memo (http://oakleafblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/ray-ozzies-internet-service-disruption.html.)
–rj
Hi again, Roger!
You’re a most interesting fellow! Send me that email anyway. I’d love to know more.
Hi, Liz,
The email is roger_jennings[at]compuserve[dot]com.
Bet you don’t see a lot of CompuServe addresses.
–rj
Hi Roger,
I’m old enough to remember plenty of people who had them, but you might be the only one I know now who does. π
Good resource Lizz, I’ll have to try it out.
Chad
PS – A potential topic for you as you have like 10 blogs going. π What do you recommend – create a website and a seperate blog or create a blog and use this as your main website? I’m trying to get some feedback as to how people think on this.
HI Chad,
Thanks! It does look like it can do some nice things, this little form maker, doesn’t it?
Interesting question you pose here. It’s the second time someone has asked me about it in a couple of weeks. I’m looking at that very question for a business I’m starting right now. I’m sure hoping that I can base it on a blog — the maintenance of a blog is so much easier. However, the gating factor is the kind of content you’re going to present. If the content on the front page needs to remain static, you might want a webpage with a blog attached.
“If the content on the front page needs to remain static, you might want a webpage with a blog attached.”
Or you could use the static front page plugin
The static front page plugin for WordPress sticks the ‘home’ page to your front page.
http://www.semiologic.com/software/
Cat,
I hadn’t heard of that one either. What a perfect solution!!!! I’m going to die, come back as guy, grow up quickly, come down there, sweep you off your feet and marry you!!
Or else leave all my money, if I ever get any. π
Liz, you say the nicest things π
But to tell you the truth, I’ve spent the last oh, months and months researching for the new blog I’m going to launch at the end of August/early September. I have about 50 wp plugins that I’ll try out to see how they work. Everything to automate what I want to do.
And that’s the secrete to my WP stash. The rest is due to a resources stash I keep adding to daily. I have bookmarks you cannot believe. Handy stuff.
I started collecting bookmarks about 5 years ago for Creative Latitude, and it’s just snowballed.
“A potential topic for you as you have like 10 blogs going. What do you recommend – create a website and a seperate blog or create a blog and use this as your main website? IΓΒ’Γ’Β¬ÒΒΒ’m trying to get some feedback as to how people think on this.”
A blog format was launched several weeks back created to run a range of blogs out of one main blog. If I can find it, I’ll post it here. It’s quite amazing and wonderful if you have a lot of authors.
New Book by the famous author, Cat Morley
“Snowballs Stashed in Borneo” hits NYTimes bestseller list in 2 minutes.
Sells out at Amazon before it’s even written.
Book signing tour has people lining up years in advance.
“Snowballs Stashed in Borneo”
Sounds great! Now all I have to get are those Sultan sized royalties π
I’m working on those royalties. How else am I going to get down there for those g&ts ? π
Thanks Liz, Cat – ggod ideas
There is another online forms builder out there called The Blue Form.
It features an AJAX style form builder as well as the ability to assign approval workflows to the forms.
This makes it more of an online process automation / eforms workflow site rather than just a form builder.
It could be used in most office type environments to automate paper based processed. We are currently trailing it at the company where I work and the reception has been quite good.
Welcome, Angelo!
Excellent. Thank you, for letting us know about it. It sounds like one great find to me. I’ll check it out. I appreciate that you included the link for me and for those reading.
You know the rule here?
Now that you’ve said “hello,” you’re not a stranger anymore. You’re a friend.
Thank you, again, Angelo.
Try Nenest.com, which is even better. It has many pre-programmed controls for input fields. And you can create rich text document like Microsoft Word document. Also you can attach files.
http://www.nenest.com/
Let me introduce another one:
http://www.mytaskhelper.com – it’s a free online database, using which you can create and share online databases.
Examples of forms is on the main page.
Excellent Article.
Nice work !