Setting up a Form on a test webpage
Let me just acknowledge that it’s been an awfully long time since I last wrote a blog here. More on that at the end of this blog.
Ok so back to the topic. Setting up a landing page is easy. You can do it using say WordPress, Wix, or a number of other website building services. Unless of course, you’re stubborn like me. Then it’s a bloody pain in the arse.
Now, this could have been a simple page with fancy graphics from say, Flaticon (or whatever you prefer), but I needed the visitors to fill out a fancy form. Again, I could have simply placed a link to a Google Form on the webpage. But I wanted visitors to fill out the form on my webpage without redirecting them to elsewhere. Would make the page look professional and legit. Also, I don’t use WordPress so couldn’t use their plugins.
Just a side-note:
My hosting service provides me with access to CPanel. This has something called Softaculous which gives me access to some apps/plugins that can be added to my website. I am just stating these things as a matter of fact since I have only recently learnt about these things and if you try to google any of these names, you are likely to tumble down a rabbit hole.
So, I look up ways in which I could achieve this, and suddenly my brilliant oversized ganglion (brain) decides to search ‘forms’ in Softaculous.
Good brain.
Form Tools is sitting right there with a smiley face. Little did I know that trying to set this up would lead me to nearly cause a breakdown. All I had to do was install Form Tools in a directory on my website and add a couple of lines of HTML code to my webpage’s HTML code.
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| HTML code from Form Tools |
Huh? What?
Same. As someone who barely knows how these apps function, I had no clue what I was getting myself into. Can be quite frustrating if it’s your first time and you’re on a deadline. But basically, all you need to do is tell Form Tools- “Hey mate, this is the form ok? And this field over here named ‘full name’ collects names, the one named ‘university’ collects university names, (and so on).”
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| Form and HTML code for my webpage |
All good? Nope. Spent the whole fucking day trying to figure out what’s wrong. Turns out, this visual programming tool that I was using to design my website kept inserting a fancy-ass ‘data-pd-name’ tag instead of just a ‘name’ tag. This led to Form Tools not recognising the form fields. Again, don’t ask- I’m fairly new to this shit.
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I might create a tutorial for future myself explaining how to do this shit and upload it on YouTube. But finally, I have a fancy form without a WordPress setup. Looks nice.
Edit: Here’s what the form looks like on atlas.npanium.com –
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| The form on ATLAS webpage |
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Most of you may know this, but I have been writing for my university magazine. And of course, working on the startup idea. Too many things on the plate right now apart from that, so didn’t find the stamina to write more than I already was. I would be moving my blogs from Blogger soon and uploading them on my website using the WordPress app through Softaculous. Please don’t ask questions- all I know is that it works better, and I own the content. Blogger has issues and I can’t be bothered with styling the default themes coz I have better things to do.
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