WordPress Google Form v0.46-beta-4 now available

I’ve update the beta version of WordPress Google Form v0.46 to beta-4 and made it available for download from this site. This beta update addresses a bug when the plugin is activated.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v.046-beta-3 available

This morning I made WordPress Google Form v0.46-beta-3 available for download from this site. I have not posted this version to the WordPress plugin repository as it still needs some testing.  This beta release includes new checking to try and detect when the form data wasn’t actually posted to Google and if detected, will suppress the confirmation page (if used) so the Google error will not be missed by the user.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.46-beta-2 available

This evening I posted the beta-2 version of WordPress Google Form v0.46 for download from this site. I have not posted this version to the WordPress plugin repository as it needs some testing.  This is a pretty significant change as beta-2 includes the new WordPress Google Form custom post type plus all of the features included in the last beta release.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

wpGForm Custom Post Type Preview

As I noted a couple days ago, I have started a “renovation” of sorts to my WordPress Google Forms plugin.  I have defined a Custom Post Type which makes it much easier to set up a form.  It is no longer necessary to worry about the syntax of a long complicated short code!  Here are a couple images of what the Dashboard UI looks like.

Adding a form to a post or page is as simple as adding the [wpgform id=’N’] short code where N maps to the form’s post id.  The short code syntax for each Google Form appears in the list of forms.

The Google Form Edit Screen has fields which map directly to all of the short code attributes that were defined in the original short code.

There is no change of operation on the front end – the form should continue to operate as it has previously.  If you’re interested in testing this new version, I hope to have a beta available fairly soon which also has some other new features.

Moving to a Custom Post Type may allow for some more robust field validation using the jQuery Validation plugin!  Stay tuned for  more details on that as I don’t think it will be in the first release of Custom Post Types.

Adding Custom Post Types to WordPress Google Form

I have been thinking about migrating WordPress Google Form from a shortcode based solution to a Custom Post Type solution.  Today I decided to move from thinking about it to acting on it.  As I add more features the short code complexity has grown quite a bit.  Because the short code contains URLs with special characters, the chance of introducing a syntax error is very high and it is by far the most common support request I receive.

There are a lot of benefits to adding a custom Post Type, among them:

  1. Reduced syntax errors.
  2. Shorter short codes.
  3. No chance of misspelling attribute names.
  4. No chance of having duplicate (or triplicate!) attributes and wondering why the first value isn’t working.
  5. Possibility of having form specific CSS.

I plan to retain the current short code syntax so existing installations will continue to work but will introduce a new short code (likely [wpgform id=’N’]) which can be used in place of the current short code.  Over time I will likely deprecate the older short code but not anytime soon.

The primary reason I am doing this is my desire to connect Google Forms with PayPal which I think I can do using a hook in Woo Commerce.  Having the Google Form as a very simple short code will help me do what I want to do (I think).

Integrating PayPal and Google Forms

As I told a co-worker 20+ years ago, there is no better way to learn how to do something than having a problem to solve.  I need to solve a problem.  My WordPress Google Form plugin originally came from a project to help our Middle School Athletics Booster Club.  It solved the problem at hand but over time I’ve added more features to it, not because the Booster Club needed them but because people asked or they were interesting problems I was compelled to solve.

Our Booster Club now wants to have an Online Shop and after playing with a couple of eCommerce plugins, I’ve decided to go with WooCommerce.  The only thing really missing is the ability to sell a Booster Club Membership.  Our membership process isn’t easily handled by any of the eCommerce plugins I’ve looked at.  WooCommerce has a paid for add-on module that looks promising but I am reluctant to buy something without trying it first.

I’d really like to inject a PayPal “pay” button into WordPress Google Form and simply use it for our membership registration but doing so isn’t simple.  PayPal makes the Payment API look very simple in their documentation but from what I’ve read, it isn’t quite so simple.

With as much mucking around with the DOM I’ve done to Google Forms usiing jQuery I don’t think it would be too hard to insert a PayPal button in place of the Submit.  Handling all of the handshaking isn’t quite as simple though.  There doesn’t appear to be an easy solution but that is what makes for a good problem.  I’ll keep noodling on it, there has to be something I can.

Adding columns to a WordPress Google Form?

I’ve received a few queries as to how a Google Form could be styled such that the form would appear to have columns.  I’ve looked at the HTML and CSS that Google provides and if it can be done in CSS, it is beyond my current CSS skill set!

That said, I think it is an interesting question and I had looked at solutions using jQuery a few months ago.  I saw one jQuery plugin in particular that looked promising but didn’t have much time to really dig into it at the time.

I received another request for columns today so I took a look at the problem again to see how hard it would be.  Here is one of my example forms split into two columns to give an idea of what this might look like:

I am using the jQuery Columnizer plugin to automatically split the form into columns in conjunction with some other jQuery to manipulate the form and add some additional DIVs which will make additional styling easier.

I am generally pleased with how it came out.  I am going to play with it a little more before releasing an update but wanted to provide a preview in case anyone had an suggestions or questions.

WordPress Google Form v0.45-beta available

I’ve made a subtle but potentially significant change to WordPress Google Form that I am looking for some people to try out.  The plugin generates a jQuery script on the fly to perform a number of actions depending on the shortcode attributes present and their setting.

Historically the jQuery script has been output as part of the form code but I’ve seen a number of cases lately where another plugin or in some cases, the theme, is manipulating the page content which ends up affecting the jQuery script.

In one case I looked at this weekend something, I am still not sure what, is injecting paragraph elements into the HTML after it detects a closing DIV tag.  For the most part this isn’t a big deal except, there are closing DIV tags in the jQuery script as part of the CAPTCHA functionality.  The CAPTCHA functionality injects a DIV which holds a second DIV and some other input elements and labels.  What ever is injecting the P elements into the HTML after every closing DIV is causing my script to have syntax errors when the page loads.

To solve this problem I have moved to loading of the jQuery script into the WordPress footer action.  In my testing making this change  has zero effect on the functionality but I’d like some other people to test it and provide me feedback.

Google Forms Beta (7998 downloads )

WordPress Google Form v0.44 now available

This morning I released v0.44 of WordPress Google Form.  This is a minor update which addresses a problem reported in the WordPress Plugin Support Forum.  This update fixes the problem where the settings which are on by default, cannot be turned off.  You can find the update in the WordPress Plugin Repository or as an update on your WordPress Dashboard.

WordPress Google Form v0.43 now available

This evening I released v0.43 of my WordPress Google Form plugin.  This update addresses a couple of bugs and fixes a few more issues with the optional CSS prefix.  It also addresses a potentially serious problem when using Debug Mode with PHP version prior to 5.3.

  • Reimplemented shortcode attribute br=’on’ usinq jQuery instead of preg_replace().
  • Reimplemented shortcode attribute legal=’off’ usinq jQuery instead of preg_replace().
  • Fixed DEBUG mode so it will work with PHP 5.2 (which doesn’t support anonymous functions).
  • Fixed CSS prefix bugs which prevented CSS prefix from being applied to all Google CSS classes.