Stephen Burge's Blog, page 32

10 Ways to Improve Your Joomla Contact Form

One question we frequently get is about the Joomla contact form. Some people think its too plain and want to redesign it or add features. Some people get too much spam.

This week we'll walk you through how to improve your Joomla contact form.

If you want to use the Joomla core, check out this guide: how to create Joomla contact forms.

But there are some serious limitations to the Joomla core. For example, you can't even store messages that are sent to you. So we highly recommend the Shack Forms extension for better Joomal contact forms.



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How to Create a Joomla Contact Form Module

This tutorial will show you how to add a contact form to the front of your Joomla site.

This will allow people to contact you quickly without having to navigate through to a dedicated "Contact Us" page.



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Send Your Joomla Forms Entries to Google Sheets

Our favorite Joomla forms extension is Shack Forms.

It has a ton of cool features that you won't find in many other Joomla forms. For example, you can store your entries in Google Sheets. Once your data is inside a Google sheet you can analyze, share or use the information in thousands of different ways.

Let's show you how to send your Joomla forms data to Google Sheets.



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Create WordPress Forms that Open and Close Automatically

Gator Forms is our favorite WordPress forms plugin.

One of the reasons we like it so much is that it has a wide range of display options. Gator Forms doesn't require you to put your form inside a Post or a Page. You can show your forms in pop-ups, tabs, accordions, lightboxes and other effects.

In this guide, I'm going to show how you to create a form that automatically opens and closes for visitors.



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Place a WordPress Form on the Side or Top of Your Site

Gator Forms is our favorite WordPress forms plugin.

One of the reasons we like it so much is that it has a wide range of pop-ups and buttons you can use to make your forms more visible.

Gator Forms doesn't require you to put your form inside a Post or a Page. You can show it around the outside of your site too.



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How to Set Gator Forms Opening and Positioning

You have a few ways to set how your WordPress Gator Forms would open up.

You also have a few options to position your Gator Forms toggler tab on your WordPress site.

In this blog post, you will take a look at those available options.



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How to Create a Joomla Contact Form

This tutorial will show you how to create a Joomla contact form.

We're going to show you two different approaches:

Using the default Contacts components, so you can create a Joomla contact form without installing any extra extensions.
Using the powerful Shack Forms extension, so you can take advantage of extra features for your Joomla contact form.




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How to Embed Google Sheets in Joomla

Google's Sheets product is their version of Microsoft Excel.

It's a powerful tool, and one that is suprisingly easy to use with Joomla. I'm going to show you how to embed Google Sheets into your Joomla site with just a URL.

You can also send Joomla forms results directly to Google Sheets.



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The OSTraining Podcast #23: Jen Kramer, Harvard, and Bootstrap 4

Jen Kramer describes herself as "Web Design Teacher" but that barely scratches the surface of what she does. She's a speaker, a teacher, a writer, a video trainer, and much more besides. Jen currently teaches web design at Harvard Extension School.

In this episode, I talk with Jen about teaching web design at Harvard and her upcoming videos for OSTraining. Jen is creating a video series and book all about Bootstrap 4.



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How to Add Google ReCaptcha to Joomla Contact Forms

Back in 2014, Google reinvented it's ReCaptcha spam prevention system.

Previous versions of Captcha tried to prevent spam by presenting users with distorted letters and numbers. This system was more painful for users than it was for spammers.

The new Google system is known as No Captcha ReCaptcha. This new system is way more user friendly and only requires the user to click in a checkbox. 

In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable this spam prevention solution in your Joomla site.



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