Somebody has asked me to produce a website and on the whole it looks pretty straightforward, however there is one section that includes a booking form for a disco with multiple questions, calendar and options to make deposit payments via bank transfer or PayPal.
How on earth can I create a form that will do all of this with Blocs?
As a quick follow up, I can now see they would want additional options with the contact form as well, including a calendar date, event type and hours of service required. Whether all of this is really necessary is debatable, but it looks like this is what the client expects, so I’m wondering how this can be achieved in Blocs? The current form options in Blocs feel very limited for business requirements.
Hello @Flashman
That example form you posted looks a lot like Machforms to me:
https://www.machform.com/
Why not use that? Blocs provides a custom html bric which could be used for the purpose of embedded the machform in your page. Very simple once you get the hang of it.
Other options exist to handle your requirement ranging from embedded a form, as per machforms, through to crafting yiur own form solution using something like the awesome Sky Forms Pro package from Voky:
With Sky Forms you would of course need to write your own back end handler for the post data ( write to db, send email, redirect … and so on ). If that sounds like too much then embedding a hosted form is probably the way to go.
Course, you don’t need to use Sky Forms specifically as there are dozens of quality form frameworks out there that could be incorporated.
Just wanted to add that the default form capabilities in Blocs are actually pretty good and a lot better then you’ll find out of the box in competing software. Who knows what the future may bring for Blocs if there are options for 3rd party plugins etc. Maybe some smart devs will make a comprehensive form builder/manager 
Thanks @klaatu I’ll have a close look at those, but match form sounds like the better option.
I’m not a full time web designer, but I’ve built some sites for clients using Foundation for Rapidweaver, which seems to have a lot more setting options for forms. I’ve started working my way through @Eldar Core Training videos, so perhaps it will show more of what can be done directly inside Blocs.
It might be a useful start if there were more contact form bric variations and comprehensive form building option would be really useful. I had aa similar request recently from somebody, who wanted a form that would calculate storage space costs. The form had to allow for various factors, such as rental period and whether the space was heated etc. We need a lot more than just sending an email.
I’m based in Cornwall, which is one of the poorest areas in the UK and small businesses are really tight for web development budgets, so it’s always a challenge to produce something good at a cost they can afford. A big plus point of Blocs is that it’s so much faster than Rapidweaver and that would make this much more viable as a business if it can do what I need.
Hopefully when Norm gets the Dev API going will see a lot more options on form brics and more.
I imagine Blocs 3 should already be a good step forward, but it’s this kind of more advanced functionality that would make all the difference to designers.
Whenever an enquiry like this comes in, I immediately hope it’s something that can be done in Blocs, but clients have an unfortunate habit of saying something will be very simple at the start and then throwing a spanner in the works later on with new requests. I don’t want to come across situations where I have to scrap everything and start from scratch with a different design app.
Bootstrap4 has a fantastic set of form components that need very little styling - see Forms · Bootstrap . So moving forward there is a good solution on the close horizon.
If a customer demands that kind of complex custom form, then they need to pay for it because they won’t get it elsewhere. If you have a recurring requirement to build forms, then it would be time very well spent to learn how to build forms and save the data.
One other thing. A few times I have had discussions with clients about forms and when you ask the question, what would you like to put on your form, they go into wild feral territory and add in everything they can think of. End customers do not like forms and often it is a better opportunity just to get an email or phone number and the client phones them back and regains control of the situation. I know this doesn’t fit every situation but just because a customer demands a form, it doesn’t mean they really need one.
Absolutely. The truth is that you can do ANYTHING using blocsapp, but you may need to know about javascript/jquery/CSS to do it, or include a 3rd party solution.
I don’t really agree that it’s fair to criticise blocsapp for not having every solution for what a client requires. It’s up to us to fill that gap between what a client demands and what blocsapp provides out of the box ( and that applies to any web builder out there).
Bootstrap 4 looks like a big step forward for form creation and I think that is what we need. Something that will allow us to build our own forms with options like radio buttons and toggled menus etc, without leaving Blocs. At present I have a lot more options using Form Base in Foundation and it’s all built in.
I also agree that clients tend to go over the top in some instances and don’t take account of how sites will be viewed by site visitors. In most cases their best option is to have customers call them direct. Nevertheless, if a client decides they want something done in a certain way, you either accept their requirements or refuse the work.
Clients should obviously pay for these things and in London it would never be an issue. In Cornwall it’s shocking how many small/medium sized businesses don’t even have a web presence. Those that do tend to have an ugly Facebook page or something that was probably done 15 years ago. There seems to be little appreciation of how bad this makes them look as a business.
Hopefully the forthcoming API will allow devs to create some useful plugins. A bootstrap based form builder would be very popular I’m sure.
I had aa similar request recently from somebody, who wanted a form that would calculate storage space costs. The form had to allow for various factors, such as rental period and whether the space was heated etc. We need a lot more than just sending an email.
This is where having a grasp of bootstrap forms or a framework like Sky Forms Pro together with a bit of know how with jQuery/JS/PHP pays off. What you are describing there is easily achievable from that starting point.
Whereas there is no guarantee that even a whizz-bang 3rd party form builder would allow you to calculate whether a specific space was heated or not. I was constantly running into these situations until deciding to figure out how to build forms and process the data myself. Once you have build a repertoire of forms and become used to working with the posted data it really does get easier.
// 20 mins or so playing around gave this:
The other bits and pieces from your example would be fine too.
Good luck.
That looks pretty good and this is clearly a skill worth learning. The bit I try to avoid with local clients is recurring costs, because they immediately get cold feet. Needless to say I can’t quote a fixed figure and pay for ongoing costs myself.
@Flashman with blocs you can make standart NICE forms, just play around, and INSIDE the form, you can always add a HTML bric, and do what every you like. Here I made a form for a client, you see even the eternicode/bootstrap-datepicker Kontakt aufnehmen mit Ferienhaus Samos alles einfach auf Deutsch
also the fields are having there own classes so the fit in the design.
Thank you @sandy I’ll have to investigate this. I’ve been offline for a day thanks to my wonderful broadband provider but I just did a Google search and found this page with lots of form examples with coding Bootstrap Forms Examples
Where does one find this custom html bric for Machform please? I can’t seem to find. Machforms uses java script which may be a issue thats why I’m asking.
Thanks
The only way to insert this that I can find is to edit the raw html.
