Summary

The cforms plugin allows for the creation of custom forms that can be placed in multiple places on the website. Each form can have its own settings including what is to be done with the user entries and the way the form will look. Forms can even be embedded inside article posts. This is one of the most robust and complex plugins available. 

Use

This plugin allows us to create multiple custom forms. Forms can put put anywhere on the site. There are currently five forms integrated into the website, "Feedback" - homepage, "Contact Us" - contact us page, "Submit Articles" - submit page, "Add Event or Deadline" - at the bottom of the calendar widget, and "Article Feedback" - at the bottom of every article. This plugin is highly customizeable and includes multiple ways of creating/embedding/managing forms. All submissions from all forms are also available via RSS (although I've had trouble getting the RSS feeds to work right).

These notification settings can be changed on a form by form basis. With this plugin we can even embed forms within posts with ease. In order to do this all you need to do is click on the "cfII" icon in Write and select a form from the dropdown. However, you may first want to create a custom form for that article. In order to do this you can go to cforms II and click "Add New Form". The setup is a bit confusing when first looking at it (a product of tons of options), so you may just want to get a hold of the admin to set one up for you.

After going to Form Settings you can add, duplicate, and delete forms. Here you can also modify the configuration and settings of the forms already created.

Form fields can be modified by their Type, their default value, their Field Name, and the requirements that must be met for the form to validate that field. Instructions on how to do this can be found in the extensive documentation under "Configuring form input fields". After configuring the fields, below the form there are a number of settings tabs that can be expanded to setup the email and other configuration options.

In addition to individual form settings, there are numberous Global Settings which apply to all forms.

Lastly, there is also an interface for viewing form submissions, which are entered into the database upon validation. Submissions can be downloaded or viewed in the backend.

Upgrade

This plugin is upgraded often. The plugin author does a good job of providing instructions for upgrading, including reminding admins to backup their database and settings before upgrading. This plugin ties into the Wordpress database, where it saves the form entries for retrieval. This means that it is a more serious upgrade than plugins that do not tie into the database. cforms also has its own settings that can be backed up. These settings save the configuration of each of the forms in use on the site. To back these settings up, simply go the cforms global settings and select "Backup All cforms Settings > Backup all settings now!".

This cforms installation has one customized file located in wp-content/plugins/cforms/styling/wide-form.css. This file sets up how the forms will look and makes the form in the sidebar of the homepage thin enough to fit in the sidebar. If the files for the new version are copied over without first preserving this file, the design setting will be lost. The easiest way to ensure it is preserved is to first copy the wide-form.css file into the new version of cforms that you have just downloaded. Then, when the new version is installed, it will alreadly have the custom css file in place.

1. After backing up all files and settings, and after preserving the wide-form.css file, you can backup the plugin.
2. Deactivate the plugin in Wordpress before removing or copying any files.
3. Delete the files out of the old version and copy over the files for the upgrade.  (In the past the "captchafonts" folder has been locked and unable to be deleted or replaced, therefore files have had to be deleted/replaced one by one.)
4. Once all the new files are in place, reactivate the plugin and check to make sure the upgrade was successful.