CMSimple_XH–Forum

Hello community,

I've just released Advancedform_XH 1beta1. <EDIT>It's available from my website.</EDIT>

Advancedform_XH facilitates creating your own mail forms for integration to CMSimple_XH. Advancedform_XH is based on AdvancedForm by Jan Kanters. Due to the increased quality standards of CMSimple_XH and to prevent possible problems with other plugins in the future, a complete rewrite was necessary. Though the functionality basically remains the same, it is to assume, that at least minor bugs were thus introduced.

The current version has to be considered Beta software! Use with utmost caution!

Any feedback is welcome -- particularly about missing features, or functionality that could be improved.

Christoph

Hi,

I always was a great fan of Advancedform plugin and still am. So I tested you XH-Version, and there are many features I really like.

BUT there is the issue, that neither the site title will be shown, nor you can put additional text in the Mailform-Page.
That problem was solved in the former advancedform plugin by putting in the plufgin call.

Are you planning a workaround about this?

Another problem is, that replacing the mailform() link in the template does not seem to work. Maybe I did something wrong, but it won´t show up. If I replace it with e.g. the form is shown, and not a the link to the page containing the form.

What is wrong?

Thx and keep going.

intelli

Hello intelli,

thanks for your interest in Advancedform_XH and your feedback.

intelli wrote:there is the issue, that neither the site title will be shown, nor you can put additional text in the Mailform-Page

The title of the page will be shown with Advancedform_XH, even when you call it with: But the prefered way to call Advancedform_XH is with the CMSimple_XH plugin call, i.e.: This way you can have arbitrary text on the page, and the mail form will be inserted at the place, the plugin was called. So I guess no workaround is necessary.

intelli wrote:that replacing the mailform() link in the template does not seem to work

You have to create a page that displays the mail form by one of the mentioned methods first. Then insert into your template: where URL_OF_THE_PAGE is everything that comes after the ? in the address line of your browser, when you are viewing the page with the mail form.

Christoph

Hi,

I tried with the XH plugin call
but then neither the title is shown, nor the arbitrary text, which I wanted to place below the form.

To all of the above, it gives me the following error message

A form with the name 'Kontaktformular' does not exist!

which is funny because when I call the plugin with
the forms shows up, but not title and arbitrary text.


Thx in advance for your help

intelli

Hi intelli,

that's really very strange! Both calls should behave exactly the same! So I have some questions:

- which CMSimple Version do you use?
- do you have defined a form with the name Kontaktformular?
- did you perhaps install Advancedform_XH without removing AdvancedForm first?

One thing I can clarify at least: the title of the form is never shown on the page! It is merely used for the subject of the mails. But the heading of the page should be shown, so IMO it is not necessary, to display the title of the form. It might be confusing, if I remove the heading of the page and instead display the title of the form, if the page with the mailform would be shown in the TOC! But I see the point: if the form will only be used as a replacement for the mailformlink(), it might make sense to do so. OTOH I'm not quite sure, if the effort to fiddle around with CMSimple's handling of the heading and content would be worth the slight advantage, that the user musn't declare the page heading the same as the form title to avoid confusion.

Christoph

Hi, me again.

I use CMSimple XH 1.4.2, and Yes, I have defined a Form called Kontaktformular ( also tried the implemented Calc-form. And no, I don't have or had installed any previous vetsions of the Plugin!

BTW I do not want the form title to be shown. The page title would be great. So theres nö need fiddling around with CMSimple itself.

Greetz

Intelli

Hi intelli,

intelli wrote:I use CMSimple XH 1.4.2, and Yes, I have defined a Form called Kontaktformular ( also tried the implemented Calc-form. And no, I don't have or had installed any previous vetsions of the Plugin!

So that is really very strange. Did you try to call another plugin with {{{PLUGIN:}}}? Does that work? And when you call it as CMSimple script at least the page title (= heading) should be displayed.

intelli wrote:BTW I do not want the form title to be shown. The page title would be great. So theres nö need fiddling around with CMSimple itself.

Nice to hear

Christoph

Hello community,

I've just released Advancedform_XH 1beta3. It's available from my website.

Advancedform_XH facilitates creating your own mail forms for integration to CMSimple_XH. Advancedform_XH is based on AdvancedForm by Jan Kanters. Due to the increased quality standards of CMSimple_XH and to prevent possible problems with other plugins in the future, a complete rewrite was necessary. Though the functionality basically remains the same, it is to assume, that at least minor bugs were thus introduced.

The current version has to be considered Beta software! Use with caution!

From the changelog:
fixed (x)html validation errors
changed mail subject to contain the domain name of the CMSimple installation
changed CC and BCC to accept a semicolon delimited list of addresses
added export and import of form definitions
extended manual
removed form.css; instead the full stylesheet.css is delivered inline with HTML mails
fixed several minor bugs and flaws
added script code to form list for copy&paste
added properties for file attachments
added versioning and auto-update for forms db
added custom error message for custom fields
added <label>s
added JS focus for first resp. erroneous fields
added CC and BCC to the mail
extended manual
added german translation
removed SMTP support

Any feedback is welcome -- particularly about missing features, or functionality that could be improved.

Christoph

My opinion - in old times of AdvancedForm and CMSimple - was that the forms created in the back-end would have basically generated standard template (stylesheet.css and template.htm). These two files then would be editable so the distribution of fields would allow better styling.
Right now it is almost not possible (or am I wrong?).
I would e.g. need to have some fields placed in one line, use special colors or fonts etc.

Hello community,

I've just released Advancedform_XH 1beta4. It's available from my website.

Advancedform_XH facilitates creating your own mail forms for integration to CMSimple_XH. Advancedform_XH is based on AdvancedForm by Jan Kanters. Due to the increased quality standards of CMSimple_XH and to prevent possible problems with other plugins in the future, a complete rewrite was necessary. Though the functionality basically remains the same, it is to assume, that at least minor bugs were thus introduced.

The current version has to be considered Beta software! Use with caution!

From the changelog:
changed meaning of required_field_mark to include %s as the field label
changed default mail adresses to webmaster@example.com
updated de.php
extended the manual (particularly the section about the template system)
some minor bug fixes

@Tata: you might have a look at http://3-magi.net/plugins/advancedform/ ... -templates. Is the explanation helpful? Should it be improved?

Any feedback is welcome -- particularly about the following points:
- is it necessary to allow configuration of the mail encoding (e.g. ISO-8859-1) for e-mail clients that can't handle UTF-8?
- should the template system be changed by dropping <?field FIELD_NAME?> and instead using a PHP function call?
- is there any need for alternative mailers (e.g. SMTP, sendmail)?
- is there any need for additional SPAM protection (e.g. IP blacklists, badword filter)?

Christoph