Tag Archives: Plugins

11.18.12
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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.

11.14.12
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WordPress Google Form v0.46-beta available

This afternoon I made a beta version of WordPress Google Form v0.46 available for download from this site. I have not posted this version to the WordPress plugin repository yet as I’d like to get some additional testing done on it before doing so.

There are a could of significant new features and a few bug fixes in this version.

  1. Columns!  You can now have your form rendered in columns.  To have a two column form, add the attribute columns=’2′ to your short code.
  2. When enabled, the simple math CAPTCHA will now appear above the Submit button instead of below it.
  3. Some minor CSS updates to support the new column feature.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.  You can see an example of multi-column support on my Multi-Column Test Bed Form.

Google Forms Beta (8844 downloads )
11.07.12
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Huh? How’d I miss WordCamp Raleigh?

I was perusing some WordPress feeds I follow this morning and was reading an article about recent debate on where Custom Post Types should live (plugin or theme – for the record, I am on the side that CPTs should reside in a plugin for the same reasons the article points out) on wpBeginner.com when I saw a mention that the debate originated at WordCamp Raleigh.

A WordCamp here in Raleigh?  How did I miss that?  Unlike many weekends where I am out an about with soccer, basketball, lacrosse or the like, I was around this weekend.  I couldn’t have gone to the whole thing but the venue for WordCamp Raleigh is maybe 15 minutes from my house.

Bummer – I really would have liked to have attended a couple of the sessions, in particular Using AJAX in your Plugins, Using Git with WordPress and a couple of others.

Maybe next year …

10.26.12
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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.

10.25.12
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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.
10.24.12
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WordPress Google Form v0.42 now available

This morning I released v0.42 of my WordPress Google Form plugin. This version fixes a number of minor bugs, one major bug, and adds some new functionality. Of particular note is the ability to add a CAPTCHA to your Google Form to help reduce SPAM form submissions.

  • Added simple math based CAPTCHA support.
  • Reintroduced jQuery Validation for checking required fields.
  • Improved support for multiple forms on one page.
  • Fixed several bugs where CSS prefix, when used, was not output in some places.
  • Moved Debug control to its own tab on the settings page.
  • Added new Debug options to facilitate chasing down HTTP API issues.
  • Fixed bug where the CSS prefix, when used, was not being applied properly to elements which had more than one class. Only the first class was properly prefixed.

You can find the update in the WordPress Plugin Repository or as an Update on your WordPress Dashboard.

10.19.12
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WordPress Google Form v0.41-beta available

This afternoon I made a beta version of WordPress Google Form v0.41 available for download from this site. I have not posted this version to the WordPress plugin repository yet as I’d like to get some additional testing done on it before doing so.

There are a could of significant new features and a few bug fixes in this version.

  1. Simple CAPTCHA!  You can now add a  simple math based CAPTCHA to a Google Form to help prevent SPAM form submissions.
  2. Improved support for multiple forms on one page.
  3. The return of jQuery validation for required fields.  This validation is optional but since I used the same jQuery plugin to implement the CAPTCHA solution, I figured I may as well make it available for required field validation again.  It works the same way it did in the initial plugin implementation until is was removed with the support for multi-page forms.
  4. New Debug options on a separate Settings tab.
  5. Several more bug fixes, notably for custom CSS prefixes.

Download the beta release and please let me know if you run into any issues.  You can see an example of the CAPTCHA and new Validation options on my Test Bed Form.

Google Forms Beta (8844 downloads )
10.17.12
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CAPTCHA Support for wpGForm

Over the past year one of the most common requests I’ve received is to add some sort of CAPTCHA support to WordPress Google Form.  I don’t deny the need for CAPTCHA but it has never been a real high priority for me personally as I didn’t have a pressing need and more importantly, because Google Forms don’t support CAPTCHA, there wasn’t an easy and/or obvious solution.

However, recently my Help and Support Form has been receiving quite a few SPAM submissions to the point it is annoying.  So now I have a vested interest in finding a solution.

Because Google Forms don’t support a CAPTCHA solution, anything I do has to be done on the WordPress side as part of the short code processing.  This makes it a bit of a challenge because the only way to support CAPTCHA is to add more content to a form.

Essentially what I need to do is generate HTML and insert it into the form and then process it and validate it upon form submission which then can’t progress if the CAPTCHA validation fails.  There are quite a few different CAPTCHA solutions, I wanted to find one that would integrate well with how WordPress Google Form works.

Since I needed to modify the HTML I immediately thought a jQuery solution would be the best bet as (a) I am already using jQuery in several places and (b) what better way to manipulate HTML than using jQuery!  A Google search yielded this list of 10 jQuery CAPTCHA plugins.  After looking through them I leaned toward QapTcha however in investigating it, using QapTcha would be a little more involved that I wanted.  I also considered jQuery Real Person but eliminated it as too cumbersome to integrate.  I may go back and look at these two again as both are interesting but both are more invasive than I was willing to take on right now.

I subsequently found another list of 10 jQuery CAPTCHA plugins.  This list had some overlap with the other list but one entry caught my eye:  #6 –  jQueryValidate Plugin plus PHP equals CAPTCHA  It caught my eye because I had previously used the jQuery Validate plugin within WordPress Google Form for validating required fields (it was eliminated later when it was no longer necessary as validation came from Google when I added support for multi-page forms).  After reading the article, I realized I could very easily implement a similar solution and more importantly, I could resurrect the jQuery Validate code from an earlier version of the plugin.

So that is where I am headed.  Getting an initial CAPTCHA on the page was pretty simple.  What proved to be the challenge was to only display the CAPTCHA when the Submit button is present.  It took me a little while to figure out the jQuery selector but as I write this post, I have the basics of a simple math CAPTCHA working for both single page and multi-page Google Forms.

I have decided to add the fields using the same classes that Google uses for their forms so any styling done using the Google CSS rules will also apply to the CAPTCHA fields.

If you want to test this out before I release it feel free to get in touch with me and I’ll make an early build available.  By no means is this solution fool proof but it should help eliminate some form SPAM and that is what I am currently trying to do.

10.02.12
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What to do when WordPress Google Form doesn’t work

So you’ve designed a Google Form and you’re happy with the layout of it.  Now you’re ready to integrate it with your WordPress site and you’ve decided to use the WordPress Google Form plugin.  Awesome.  Looks like it will do exactly what you want:  Easily create custom forms and gather data in a Google Docs spreadsheet for easy collection and dissemination of data.

So you install WordPress Google Form and get your shortcode set up and you visit your page to see the result.  In most cases, as long as the short code is properly set up, WordPress Google Forms works as advertised.  98% of the support requests I receive are for help with styling the form using CSS to make it match the host site better.

However, from time to time a user runs into an issue where WordPress Google Form simply doesn’t work.  This usually manifests itself in one of two ways:

  1. The form is never displayed and instead an error message that indicates the form couldn’t be retrieved and try reloading the page.
  2. The form displays properly but doesn’t submit correctly and the form results are never posted to the Google Docs spreadsheet.

Case #1 usually indicates one of two things:

  1. Most frequently the short code isn’t properly formatted.  This takes on all sort of possible problems, the most common one is when the WordPress Visual Editor converts the the URL to the form into a hyperlink.  There are other errors, such as the wrong quote character around attribute values but the hyperlink problem is by far the most common occurrence.
  2. Your web hosting environment doesn’t support the WordPress HTTP API.  This isn’t too common but it does come up from time to time.  It is very common on “free” hosting service packages.  Frequently these plans have fopen() and other remote transports disabled.  The only solution here is to move to a hosting plan which supports the WordPress HTTP API.
  3. A firewall prevents access to Google for remote requests.  I’ve only run into this once but it happened and it was very difficult to find.  In the end, I didn’t find it, the user did but that was after we had done a bunch of debugging to figure out what was going on.

Case #2 usually indicates a problem with Apache’s ModSecurity.

I’ve run into this a couple of times and made some pretty significant changes to the plugin to account for ModSecurity but there is still a chance it can kick in IF the user is being asked for a URL or a similar value which ModSecurity doesn’t like.  Right now there isn’t much that can be done when this happens except to not request URL values or to instruct the user to strip off the “http://” (or other) prefix.

In addition to the Debugging aid I’ve added to the plugin, I recently found the Core Control plugin.  Core Control is a very useful plugin for chasing down the sort of problems I’ve encountered with WordPress Google Form.  It can show which transports your server supports for the WordPress HTTP API and even has the ability to disable some of them to chase problems down.

If you run into problems, you can always use my Help and Support Form but also give Core Control a shot to see if it can help identify where the problem might be.

09.14.12
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WordPress Google Form v0.39 released

This morning I released v0.39 of my WordPress Google Form plugin.  This update addresses the corner case exposed when using WordPress Google Form with the Unite theme from Paralleus.  To solve this incompatibility I’ve introduced a new short code attribute called unitethemehack which defaults to off.  By turning it on, WordPress Google Form will modify the Google Form HTML to protect the Submit button(s) from being manipulated by the Unite theme.

You can find this update in the WordPress plugin repository or as an update on your WordPress Dashboard.