So iPhorm, a form builder for WordPress, yes before you say it, I know there are a number of form building plugins out there at the moment (such as Contact Form 7 and Form Builder), but you really should take a look and see how this plugin compares, it won’t disappoint I promise.

iPhorm WordPress Plugin

iPhorm’s website says:

iPhorm makes it easy to build basic or complex forms in WordPress in minutes.

Truthfully after playing about with the plugin for only a few minutes it was quite clear to see that this statement was spot on. The plugin comes with a huge amount of features and takes the basic form builder plugin to the next level.

iPhorm has so many features, I’m only going to highlight the few below but please feel free to check them all out over at iPhorms own website.

Field Type Support

iPhorm supports a lot of different field types from your usual text box, textarea, select boxes, checkboxes, radio buttons etc.. right through to really niche fields like time, date, file upload, captcha, password and hidden.

On extra feature I liked was that they had incorporated the jQuery UI library so that date fields included pop-up date selectors. I very cool addition from a UX point of view.

Email and Database Form Actions

The cool thing about this plugin is that it not only gives you option to have the form data sent to you in an email but also captures all the information in your WordPress db. This is helpful if you don’t want your inbox filled with messages and are after a single place to manage all of your responses

Drag, Drop & Ajax Interface

The whole process of creating a form has been made so simple with great use of Ajax. Adding fields, updating settings and moving the field orders is such a smooth process.

In addition you can tell a lot of thought has gone into the admin section of this plugin. All the basic “must do” actions are displayed clearly to you after every click, this allows you to create basic forms very quickly and easily without any technical knowledge. At the same time you have all the advanced optional settings just one click away, if you really want to customise how each form works.

Many More Great Features

As I mentioned earlier, there are too many features to list here on my website but check the rest them out for yourself, including Preview Mode, Tool Tips, Form Themes and Import/Export Forms Across Websites.

Conclusion

I would have to say that this is a very very good plugin and you can tell that the guys at themeCatcher have put a lot of work in to this.

Normally I’m not one for paid for WordPress plugins but I think the features of iPhorm are worth paying the $25 for. However as a developer I would like to see some sort of commercial licence for it. If you are managing 20 -30 + websites, $25 a licence is soon going to add up and might actually be very cost effective.

If there was a commercial licence available that allowed me to use it across all of my sites I would definitely be using it today. But either way go check it out for yourself and see what you think.

Update

2/12/2011 – After speak with the guys at themeCatcher, they have informed me that they are currently looking into commercial multi-site licences for this plugin, which is great news. Please help them out and let them know your thoughts on commerical multi-site licence pricing.

Download

iPhorm is avaible to purchase over at codecanyon: iPhorm WordPress Plugin.

Here is the code that you need:

<?php
$social_sharing_toolkit = new MR_Social_Sharing_Toolkit();
 echo $social_sharing_toolkit->create_bookmarks(get_permalink( $post->ID ), get_the_title( $post->ID ), '');
?>

As you can probably tell, all this does is pass the current post ID and title into the function create_bookmarks. So you can use this piece of code anywhere in your theme template files within the loop.

There a many different types of splash screens around, homepage replacement pages, jQuery overlays, hacky CSS solutions etc… but one thing that they all have in common is that they all annoy the hell out on me when visiting a website.

Considering the Internet is built up of  information, and that’s what people use it for. It seems strange that some website owners are willing to jeopardize visits to their sites, by intercepting the users path to the exact information they are coming to your site for.

Ok so I may be coming across very anti splash page here. Even I have to say there are some advantages of using them, but I really do think in this case the disadvantages really do outweigh the advantages.

Splash Page – Advantages

They are a good way for marketers to attract visitors attention to latest offers/new things on the site.

There a good way to show off your design and creative skills. *

…if there are more please add them to the comments below because I really am struggling.

*I think this one is more a matter of opinion because with HTML5, CSS3 and jQuery, you can be creative enough on your actually site, without having to implement a splash page.

Splash Page – Disadvantages

Probably the biggest disadvantage – They annoy and confuse customers. Surveys have shown that 25% for people will instantly navigate away from a website if confronted with a splash page. Whether your a blog or you monetize content or even run a e-commerce site, losing 25% of your visitors can never be a good thing.

Depending on how you implement you splash page it could massively affect your SEO rankings. If you replace you keyword rich homepage with a fancy graphical splash page then you will instantly lose any ranking your website had.

These two reasons alone should be a good enough reason not to implement a splash screen on your website or remove it now if you already have one.

Whats Next?

I really hope splash pages will be a piece of the Internet that we leave behind, but im sure only time will tell. While we have marketers out there that are more interested in getting their message across, than they are in an enjoyable experience for the visitor. Then I believe we won’t see the end of one of the most annoying additions to the Internet that we just can’t shift.

How does it work?

Referenced in the WordPress codex as ‘Post Thumbnails’, the codex describes it as:

Post Thumbnail is a theme feature introduced with Version 2.9. Thumbnail is an image that is chosen as the representative image for Posts, Pages or Custom Post Types. The display of this images is up to the theme. This is especially useful for “magazine-style” themes where each post has an image.

Basically (in one sentence) all you need to do is to upload an image, set it as your Featured Image and add the function to the theme. Simple, right? Well in fact it is. Let me take you through the process below.

Step One : Making your theme compatible

The first thing you have to do is make sure your theme supports this feature. As this feature was released in v2.9 a lot of the older themes don’t actually support it and need a functions.php update.

If you go and create a new post or page you should see a box on the right hand side called ‘Featured Image’.

If this box doesn’t show then you need to add the following line of code to your themes functions.php file.

if ( function_exists( 'add_theme_support' ) ) {
  add_theme_support( 'post-thumbnails' );
}

Once you added this and refresh your page, you should see the box.

Step Two: Uploading your images

Now that you have the Featured Image box showing, its time to add your image to your post or page. To do this, click the ‘Set featured image’ click in the Featured Image box.

This will open the media gallery pop up and allow you to upload you image as normal. Once you have uploaded it, instead of clicking the ‘Insert into post’ link, you should click the ‘Use as featured image’ link. This will assign the image to your post or page.

Step Three: Displaying your images in your theme

OK, so you image is attached to a post but its not showing when you view the page. The final step is to add the display function into your theme, where you want the image to display.

If you add the following code into your loop, it will display your featured image.

<?php
// check if the post has a Post Thumbnail assigned to it.
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
  the_post_thumbnail();
}
?>

You can add the code anywhere with the loop, as it is entirely up to you where you would like the image to display in your theme. I added mine just above the content tag so it would show at the top of my posts.

<?php
// check if the post has a Post Thumbnail assigned to it.
if ( has_post_thumbnail() ) {
the_post_thumbnail();
}
the_content();
?>

If you check out your post or page you  should now see your image. Don’t forget that it can be added to any loop you have in your theme. So if you wanted it to display on your post lists then add it to the loop in the index.php file or if you want it to display on the post it’s self, add it to your single.php. The options are endless.

This is such a good feature of WordPress and hopefully will be more supported as more and more themes start including it. There are loads more settings available that I didn’t cover, such as Set the Post Thumbnail Size and Styling Post Thumbnails which you can read about over in the WordPress Codex.

With PHP Code!

You can add the following piece of code to your functions.php file in your theme directory.

/* Disable the Admin Bar. */
add_filter('show_admin_bar', '__return_false');
/* Remove the Admin Bar preference in user profile */
remove_action('personal_options', '_admin_bar_preferences');

If you don’t have FTP access to your website then you can add this to your functions.php file by going to the Appearance -> Editor section of your dashboard. At the top of the page there is a select box that says ‘Select theme to edit’; make sure that this is your currently active theme, then click on the ‘Theme functions’ file in the list on the right.

Now add the following piece of code to the end of the file just inside the close PHP tag ‘?>’ and save the changes.

/* Disable the Admin Bar. */
add_filter('show_admin_bar', '__return_false');
/* Remove the Admin Bar preference in user profile */
remove_action('personal_options', '_admin_bar_preferences');

If you check the site you should no longer see the admin bar.

With a Plugin!

Not surprisingly there is already a plugin to achieve this exact thing. You can download it directly from the WordPress plugin directory. Just add it to your plugin directory and activate in the plugins sections of the dashboard.

Link: Disable Admin Bar

I think this is a great addition to the WordPress core but I think personally because I use the White Label CMS plugin then I will wait until I am able to customise it before adding it to any of my websites.