StaticForms
A forms back-end for your static web sites
I needed a simple way to add forms to a static website that I was building using VuePress. None of the existing options quite met my needs, so I built one that did.
What, again? Didn't I announce this last week too?
I did, and yes, I've done it again, this time rebuilding the StaticForms docs site using Docusaurus. Docsify enabled me to a build great looking, and functional, documentation site, but I found a major flaw (for my purposes - your mileage may vary) so I decided to rebuild it again using Docusaurus. Fortunately, they both use Markdown for all their content, so the migration wasn't too much work. The new new docs site is live now...let me know what you think...
We've completely revamped the StaticForms Help Docs.
The original version was built using the Saber static site generator (SSG). Saber was great at the time, and I'm still a huge fan of SSGs, but it's really intended for creating blogs and I decided that it was time to rebuild the help dos using something better suited to the job. Say hello to our new help docs built using Docsify!
Using Docsify should make it quicker to create great-looking documentation for the new features we're adding. 馃
Pleased to announce a new StaticForms integration with Revue by Twitter.
If you want to publish an email newsletter, Revue is a great option. It's easy to use, free to get started, and Twitter takes a very reasonable cut on paid newsletters.
Revue also provides a sign-up form which you can embed on your website, so you might be asking why you would need to use StaticForms? The answer is flexibility - with Revue you only get to ask your subscribers for their name and email. With StaticForms you can ask your subscribers anything you want then use that information to better understand them.
Read more on our blog.
Just released a major update to the Submissions dashboard.
There's a big chart at the top of the page that shows how many submissions your form has received, split between spam and non-spam submissions, over the last 7, 30 or 90 days on a daily basis, or for the last 6 or 12 months on a monthly basis.
We've added paging to the submissions list, with a default of 25 submissions at a time, as well as the ability to sort the submissions by the date they were received.
And, lastly, we've improved the Inbox and Spam Folders we introduced in the last release by enabling you to move submissions between folders or to archive submissions.
Altogether, we think this makes managing submissions much easier!
I just published an update to StaticForms with a refreshed look and improvements to the dashboard.
Under the covers I've also moved the application to .NET 5.0 which brings some performance improvements and has enabled me to simplify the codebase in some areas and fully automated the build / deploy pipeline using Github Actions, which should lead to more regular and reliable updates going forward.
After using a different technologies for the marketing site (ASP.NET) and blog (Saber SSG) for StaticForms, I rewrote both this weekend using Eleventy.
Now there's one technology stack, one CI/CD pipeline and a lot less head-scratching whenever I need to make changes.
And Eleventy is a super-productive way to develop web sites and blogs, so hopefully there'll be a bit more frequent blogging going on in future.
So, it turns out that due to the way Google reCAPTCHA hooks into forms, it bypasses the standard HTML5 input field validation. Not cool.
After a lot of research, and trial and error, I've updated the demos to show how to integrate reCAPTCHA whilst ensuring that the input field validation is still triggered. It mans that integration requires a small amount of JavaScript, but it's still pretty straightforward and means that StaticForms can use reCAPTCHA to identify spam whilst you can be sure that your forms are populated correctly.
StaticForms has had support for honeypot fields to help fight form spam since shortly after it was launched.
Sometimes though, it's useful to have another tool in the anti-spam armoury.
Today's release adds support for both the checkbox and invisible versions of Google's reCAPTCHA v2. Demos and code samples demonstrating how to integrate the invisible and checkbox versions are available now and a blog post and help docs will be added shortly.
StaticForms is featured on BetaPage today!
I chose not to pay to be listed, so it's taken almost two months, but today is the day.
I listed StaticForms on 10Words a few weeks ago and saw only a small number of visits directly attributable to that, so it will be interesting to see if BetaPage is more successful.
Webflow is growing in popularity as a powerful no-code web development tool.
If you export your Webflow site to host it elsewhere, or just need more powerful form-handling thatWebflow offers, StaticForms may be the answer. This tutorial walks through setting up the integration between StaticForms and Webflow.
https://blog.staticforms.co/posts/staticforms-webflow-integration.html
