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.

A number of new features have been added including customisable labels and titles, post counts, excluding taxonomies and support for custom taxonomies.

Usage

<?php chainselect_getcategories( $tax, $level, $titles, $labels, $btn_text, $exclude, $count ) ?>

Parameters

$tax

(string) (optional) The taxonomies to retrieve terms from. Default: Category

$level

(integer) (optional) The amount of levels of child terms to return. Default: 1

$titles

(array) (optional) Titles for the first select option in each level – Must be the same number of array elements as $level. Default: array(‘Please select…’)

$labels

(array) (optional) Labels for each select element – Leave blank for no labels. Default: ”

$btn_text

(string) (optional) Text for submit button. Default: ‘Submit’

$exclude

(string) (optional) Exclude taxonomies by id – comma seperated string of id’s. Default: ”

$count

(integer) (optional) Show count of posts for each term. Default: 1

Examples

Show 3 levels of terms with custom labels and titles.
Syntax:

<?php chainselect_getcategories( 'category', 3, array('Select Country', 'Select County', 'Select Town'), array('Country', 'County', 'Town') ) ?>

Show 2 levels of custom terms with custom titles and no term count and excluding terms 6 and 9.
Syntax:

<?php chainselect_getcategories( 'location', 2, array('Select Country', 'Select City'), '', '', '6,9', 0 ) ?>

Details

Important information if you are upgrading from an old version of this plugin, DON’T!

I can’t stress enough that this plugin has been re-written from scratch and is in no way backwards compatible, so please delete the old version of the plugin before installing the new one.

Download

The new version is now available over on WordPress. Download Category Ajax Chain Selects now.

PLEASE NOTE THERE IS A NEW VERISON OF THIS PLUGIN, PLEASE SEE Category Ajax Chain Select – Re-written from scratch : WordPress Plugin

This plugin came about because I couldn’t find a plugin that already had this functionality for WordPress, so I created a simple plugin to get me going. At present it is very basic; using a template tag below, you can place the chain selects any-where on the your page template, and then style it using CSS.

chainselect_getcategories();

The plugin also has the ability to pass the category level through, for example if you wanted 3 categories visible, you could use the template tag as (by default it will always show 2 category levels if no value is passed):

chainselect_getcategories(3);

I will continue to work on this plugin over time and add new features such as page codes, so that you can add the select boxes straight into your posts & pages. In the meantime, if there are any plugin developers out there that would like to help me develop this plugin, I’d love to hear from you.

PLEASE NOTE THERE IS A NEW VERISON OF THIS PLUGIN, PLEASE SEE Category Ajax Chain Select – Re-written from scratch : WordPress Plugin