05 · 20

Create Any Type of Form You Like on Your WordPress Site

A few weeks ago, I was building a site for an author. WordPress covered all her requirements except for one: a page where visitors could write testimonials that would show up on the site. WordPress has tons of "form" plugins, but I couldn't find any that would allow me to republish the data from the forms on to the site. I was about to give up the hunt and write a plugin of my own when I came across one that does just that: Formidable!

Formidable

Formidable is a plugin that makes it dead simple to create almost any kind of form. You can drag and drop fields into your form and customize its looks with the in-place editor, and your form will be ready in no time. You don't even need to know what HTML and CSS mean to use this plugin.

When the form is ready and visitors have written in it, you can login as the admin and manage the registrations. Formidable can replace a multitude of other plugins that you use to display user-entered information such as testimonials, polls, surveys and contact forms (of course!).

Enough said. Now, let's use Formidable.

Setting Up Formidable

You install Formidable just like you would any other WordPress plugin. Log in to the admin panel and click to "Add New" Plugins. Search for "Formidable Forms" and then install and activate the plugin. When activated, you will find a new tab in the left column titled "Formidable."

Formidable comes in two versions: Formidable (which is free) and Formidable Pro (priced at US $35). When compared to Formidable Pro, Formidable is, understandably, a little restrictive. You can use only the basic fields, and every time a visitor submits the form, you will be emailed the filled-out form. It doesn't get stored in the database for you to review later or to display it on your site. If this restriction is acceptable to your task at hand, you don't need to upgrade.

The features that set Formidable Pro apart from its counterparts, such as conditionally showing certain fields and displaying the results on your site, make it definitely worth every penny. For the remainder of this article, I will explain the features assuming that you have purchased Formidable Pro.

To sign up for a Formidable Pro membership, you have to visit the signup page on their website. You have to choose a username and password for your account. After signing up, come back to the Admin panel, click on "Formidable Pro," and enter your username and password. After you save it and the page reloads, you will find that three new pages have come up under the Formidable section. You are now ready to build forms for your website.

Continue with rest of article...

05 · 18

HTML5 Security Cheatsheet

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If we are always aware about web security, I think this stuff will be very useful. This is an HTML5 Security Cheatsheet from Mario Heiderich that contains web application security threats, browser bugs, threat example, tips for avoiding the threats, related sources and the browser list from each threat.

The threats and bugs including Cross Site Scripting (XSS), JavaScript execution via VIDEO tag poster attribute, link hijacking via BASE tag and JavaScript URI, XML-stylesheets executing JavaScript, Client-side denial of service via repeat templates and many more.

05 · 12

How to Use Twitter Events to Grow Your Network

Twitter is a great platform and it truly rocks for person-to-person networking.  But what if you want to grow your network or find more people to connect with offline?  This is where Twitter events can be very useful.

Twitter events allow you to network at specific times with larger groups of people through the use of hashtags.

Twitter events can help you find people to build your own Twitter network. And as you participate in these events, you will increase your Twitter authority on the topics you discuss.  You can even create your own Twitter events to drive your networking and social media marketing.

6 Types of Twitter Events

First you need to identify the groups of people you want to network with. Then you should choose the types of events where it’s easy and comfortable for you to network with these people.  This is how you can slowly build up meaningful one-on-one relationships with people who matter to you and to your business.

Fortunately there are several different types of groups gathering around specific topics on Twitter at specific times.

Here are events that take place offline where people use Twitter as a communication tool to share their experience of the in-person event.

#1: Live events. You’ve probably seen Twitter hashtags used by people tweeting from conferences.  People can tweet about any kind of live event.  If you want to get the most out of your Twitter networking at a live event, you should do as Adam Vincenzini says and plan ahead to ensure viral Twitter coverage of live events.

#2: Tweetups. Tweetups are when you meet your Twitter connections in real life.  Tweetups can be impromptu events or with slightly more organization.  And they’re a great way to do some traditional offline networking.


What is a Tweetup?

#3: Large-scale offline Twitter events. Some offline events such as the Twestival fundraising event are organized on a wider scale and bring a large Twitter community together.  These are also interesting places to expand your Twitter network if the community is a good fit for your business.

Twestival

Twestival gets people on Twitter to meet up all over the world.

Here are some events that only take place on Twitter:

#4: Current events. Many businesses can benefit from staying current on trending topics and participating in relevant Twitter conversations. Some current events or breaking news may give you reason to create your own Twitter discussion or chat event.

#5: Twitter Interviews. You can conduct Twitter Interviews with different communication goals. You can do the interview like a journalist or, as this is on Twitter, you can conduct it more like a game show, with a short set of questions aimed at having more fun.  Choose the kind of Twitter interview to use to give you the networking environment you prefer.

Twestival

You can also find the Small Business Buzz chats on their blog.

#6: TweetChats. There are a number of regularly scheduled TweetChats. Small Business Buzz, or @sbbuzz on Twitter, holds chats every Tuesday to discuss small business topics.  Another interesting regular TweetChat takes place on Thursdays, @lrnchat to discuss learning and social media. It’s easy to see how you can expand your Twitter network by finding TweetChats with your preferred audience.

Variety in Communication

It’s important to note that people use multiple social media platforms for communication. Conversations are not limited to Twitter. There are also interesting events to look for outside Twitter and then come back and follow the contacts you meet there on Twitter.

Facebook. Many events are shared on Facebook. Be sure to follow the people you meet on Twitter, find them on Facebook and have a look at what they share and discuss there.

LinkedIn. Be sure to check out LinkedIn events too.

Although it requires a little bit of research, it’s often easy to create strong relationships when you connect with the same people on different social media platforms.  It’s interesting to note that one-on-one networking is usually easier to initiate on Twitter.

Tools for Twitter Events

Hashtags. Hashtags are key.  They enable people to gather into groups on Twitter. This is how you find others interested in similar topics.  You can read more about how to follow hashtags in this previous article.

Twitter tools. Many Twitter applications come and go, but they often have some great features and make Twitter networking easier and more fun.  Unfortunately, there isn’t a solution to fit all of your needs in following or creating Twitter events. So it’s always worthwhile doing a little research to look for what’s useful for you. Here are some Twitter applications you may find interesting: TweetChat, Tweetvite, and TweetMyEvents.

Event tools.  Sometimes you simply need an event management tool. There are a variety of online tools to help you: Eventbrite, Amiando and meetup are popular event tools. But again, you’ll need to check them out to find the one best suited to your particular needs.

Social Media Networking

Twitter is only one social media communication tool.  Other social media platforms work well when combined with Twitter networking.  For example, many people share photos from events on Flickr and they often share the links to their photos on Twitter. The comments on these photos are also a great resource to help you find people to follow and grow your network. You can also do the same research with YouTube videos, Posterous pages and any other social media platform your audience frequents.

In addition, Foursquare and other geo-location applications are making it easier to create events and bring people together in person. This is why more and more businesses will be including event networking in their social media marketing plans. And Twitter plays a key role in developing your network, thanks to its ease of real-time one-on-one networking.

What other events on Twitter do you use to grow your Twitter network? Have you participated in a Tweetup?  If so, what was your experience? Please share them in the comments below.

05 · 12

Facebook Prepares To Launch “Places,” Foursquare Improves “Places” - Coincidence?

As we reported over the weekend, Facebook is gearing up to launch a new “Places” tab on (at least) the mobile version of its site. This new area is likely to contain a list of venues close to your current location that you can check-in to. Yes, it’s basically what you do on Foursquare (and several other location-based services). That’s why Foursquare’s announcement today that they’ve made their own “Places” area “smarter” shouldn’t come as a big surprise.

On its blog today

, Foursquare notes that users should see improvements to the venues that show up in their own Places area on their mobile apps (and through their API). Basically, they’re starting to look at venue popularity, time of day, and category to determine which venues to show a user. For example, if it’s noon on a weekday, a restaurant may be a more likely destination than a movie theater. This should help with the problems some users face not being able to find the appropriate venue at first glance because there are simply too many venues around them.

Or, as Foursquare puts it, “We have sophisticated algorithms that balance all of these factors to present you the best possible list of venues so that you spend less time searching and more time enjoying wherever you’ve checked in.”

If Facebook is prepared to launch its own Places area, you have to believe they think they’ve done a good job populating it with venues so people can use it at launch. Or maybe (and I’m just speculating here), Facebook is using Foursquare’s API to help populate these venues (as I noted, the new changes do affect the API as well).

Either way, if they’re directly competing or helping one another out, it’s a smart move for Foursquare to improve the check-in experience. Until we have a unified places database (which may never happen despite a lot of people working on it), the ability to pull up the correct venues quickly will be a differentiating factor between all of these location services.

05 · 12

Image drag-and-drop in Gmail--nice, but limited

In a feature I'll likely find useless, Google has added the ability to drag images directly into e-mails written in Gmail in the Chrome browswer rather than rely on a dialog box to select them as an attachment.

It's a nice idea and I'm all for it, but here's why it's not for me: screen real estate. For most programs I use, they're set to fill the entire screen, so to drag an image into Chrome, I'd have to resize the browser, position it to one side, position the image elsewhere, and then drag.

Testing it on Mac OS X, I had to laboriously move and hide a bunch of background windows, too. It's far easier to just use the dialog box. If you have a gigantic screen, it might be useful, but it still could take a lot of careful rearrangment.

Images can be dropped right into Gmail's address window for rich-text messages.

Images can be dropped right into Gmail's address window for rich-text messages.

(Credit: screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

According to a blog post, the technology is an adaptation of the Gmail drag-to-attatch technology that arrived for Chrome and Firefox 3.6 users in April. That method brings forth a large green drop zone when you drag a file or files onto the Gmail message.

The image drag and drop is slightly different. Instead of aiming for the drop zone, you plop the image directly into Gmail's message composition window. After you're done, tag at the bottom of the image lets you resize or delete the image.

It worked fine for me on Windows XP, Windows 7, and Mac OS X 10.6--in all cases using the newest Chrome 5.0.396.0 developer-preview version of the browser. Make sure you have "rich formatting" enabled, though.

The feature is only for Chrome now, but Google promises other browsers will be included in the future.

Also, be warned: because the image is embedded into a rich-text e-mail, recipients will have to proceed differently if they want to save or otherwise handle the image compared to what they'd do with an attached version.

Drag and drop is one of the fancy new features in the effort to revamp HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language, with HTML5. Another one that's arriving in browsers, the Files interface, is good for selecting multiple files in a dialog box, which for people like me could be more helpful for adding attachments. Gmail currently uses a Flash-based mechanism for the task so people don't have to go through the hassle of multiple single-file selections.

Kyle Reddoch

I am an aspiring Web Developer, Android Fanatic, Family Man, and all around Web Geek! I also do Freelance Development work.

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