Hi jan, thanks for your reply. I run a complex site but what I'd like to do is simple. I have roughly 20k pages, about 2000 of which have forms on them that require a drop down menu, in about 500 pages the forms are similar, but the options are different. Of that 500 pages roughly half change their options each season. I therefore require a range of drop down selection inputs on many pages, often with different sets of options. I want to create them as and when necessary.
I can do this on a different CMS (called textpattern) and it's very easy. I have a "macro" in which I can set the parameters (the options to choose from) and the macro creates a drop down control on the front end. When the form is submitted I handle the response in a standard way according to the parameters I have set. I don't have to do anything else - I just put some parameters into a macro and I get the necessary drop down form. With Umbraco, first I cannot reliably place a macro on a page (in IE9 the macro entry into the RTE is impossibly buggy, so I'm forced to use raw HTML most of the time). And if I could it would appear that I need a new datatype for every sdrop down on my site (!) which I can't really believe as that would run into thousands.
All I want is a straightforward method to create a wide range of drop down menus on any page on-the-fly (as you might find on any medium scale website) without the need to go all round the houses creating new datatypes for every one.
ps. Tried to reply this to previous post but too many bugs in this forum - doesn't work in IE9 or iPad !
I've had a quick read of your other post (it is annoying that sometimes editing posts here doesn't work, it reflects badly on the CMS) and would like to point you in the direction of Umbraco Contour. Contour is a commercial product, but is a no-brainer when it comes to working with forms in umbraco - it's amazing value for money at 99 Euros per domain. It has a free trial too. Basically what you would do (based on the loose grasp I have of your requirements) is generate a form in Contour - using either hard-coded values for the drop-down or pointing the form field to a data source which could populate the drop-down for you. You could then embed instances of this form anywhere on your pages either through the WYSIWYG editor or directly into your templates. If you have many tens of forms which are identical then perhaps it would be better to use a template so you only embed the form once into the template and use that template across your site for the relevant pages which need that particular form.
You can even subscribe to events in Contour to handle what happens with the data from the forms e.g. send X and email when form Y is submitted etc, all through a pretty simple/quick interface.
Using Contour you're basically managing forms and form field data sources in one central place, directly within the Umbraco UI, then rolling those forms out across your whole site in the most appropriate way.
Hope this points you in a useful direction anyhow :)
Thanks for your understanding Dan, it looks like Contour is required. I guess I'm used to systems where there's no need to manage forms centrally, as they can be easily managed within nodes and macros. There should be no need for anything more complex. If I must buy a separate module to make forms manageable that says the architecture isn't good (unless it's designed to be unworkable until I buy the module, in which case it's been quite well thought out!). This may not be Umbraco's fault, perhaps it's .NET's generally poor functionality with forms, but whatever the reason there are way more efficient ways of organising forms. Anyway, I'll look at Contour, and thanks for your patience!
There are other ways too, but I personally just find that Contour saves me a lot of time in managing forms. An alternative but common way to handle scenarios like this would be to create a master content node (you might call it 'settings' or something like that) and add your form drop-down values as content nodes inside this master folder. Or you could create groups of these items in nested folders. Then you could use something like the uComponents multi-node-tree-picker data type on your document types to select groups of these nodes from which to build your form.
I know this is a brief explanation, but let us know if you decide to look into this avenue (or if Contour for some reason doesn't do what you need still) and you need more detail/clarification. There are many ways to skin this cat - it's just a case of helping you to find the right one :)
Thanks Dan, I'm sure there are convoluted ways to do this, there always is, but I have a simple requirement so I'd hoped for a simple solution. It seems all routes in Umbraco are complex by design - there's very little you can do without creating a new doctype, macro, template and xslt file - often all of these - plus a datatype for every form element with different options - and then spend hours linking them together. This unnecessary complexity stems from .NET (and is, according to MS employees, designed as a 'barrier to entry' for small firms) so please don't get me wrong - it's not Umbraco's fault. It's the best a .NET CMS can get and beats others hands down. It can't escape its undelying platform though, which makes some aspects, working with forms specifically, a time consuming pain in the proverbial.
Trying to discuss but can't for bugs in forum
Hi jan, thanks for your reply. I run a complex site but what I'd like to do is simple. I have roughly 20k pages, about 2000 of which have forms on them that require a drop down menu, in about 500 pages the forms are similar, but the options are different. Of that 500 pages roughly half change their options each season. I therefore require a range of drop down selection inputs on many pages, often with different sets of options. I want to create them as and when necessary.
I can do this on a different CMS (called textpattern) and it's very easy. I have a "macro" in which I can set the parameters (the options to choose from) and the macro creates a drop down control on the front end. When the form is submitted I handle the response in a standard way according to the parameters I have set. I don't have to do anything else - I just put some parameters into a macro and I get the necessary drop down form. With Umbraco, first I cannot reliably place a macro on a page (in IE9 the macro entry into the RTE is impossibly buggy, so I'm forced to use raw HTML most of the time). And if I could it would appear that I need a new datatype for every sdrop down on my site (!) which I can't really believe as that would run into thousands.
All I want is a straightforward method to create a wide range of drop down menus on any page on-the-fly (as you might find on any medium scale website) without the need to go all round the houses creating new datatypes for every one.
ps. Tried to reply this to previous post but too many bugs in this forum - doesn't work in IE9 or iPad !
Hi Jed,
I've had a quick read of your other post (it is annoying that sometimes editing posts here doesn't work, it reflects badly on the CMS) and would like to point you in the direction of Umbraco Contour. Contour is a commercial product, but is a no-brainer when it comes to working with forms in umbraco - it's amazing value for money at 99 Euros per domain. It has a free trial too. Basically what you would do (based on the loose grasp I have of your requirements) is generate a form in Contour - using either hard-coded values for the drop-down or pointing the form field to a data source which could populate the drop-down for you. You could then embed instances of this form anywhere on your pages either through the WYSIWYG editor or directly into your templates. If you have many tens of forms which are identical then perhaps it would be better to use a template so you only embed the form once into the template and use that template across your site for the relevant pages which need that particular form.
You can even subscribe to events in Contour to handle what happens with the data from the forms e.g. send X and email when form Y is submitted etc, all through a pretty simple/quick interface.
Using Contour you're basically managing forms and form field data sources in one central place, directly within the Umbraco UI, then rolling those forms out across your whole site in the most appropriate way.
Hope this points you in a useful direction anyhow :)
Thanks for your understanding Dan, it looks like Contour is required. I guess I'm used to systems where there's no need to manage forms centrally, as they can be easily managed within nodes and macros. There should be no need for anything more complex. If I must buy a separate module to make forms manageable that says the architecture isn't good (unless it's designed to be unworkable until I buy the module, in which case it's been quite well thought out!). This may not be Umbraco's fault, perhaps it's .NET's generally poor functionality with forms, but whatever the reason there are way more efficient ways of organising forms. Anyway, I'll look at Contour, and thanks for your patience!
Hi Jed,
There are other ways too, but I personally just find that Contour saves me a lot of time in managing forms. An alternative but common way to handle scenarios like this would be to create a master content node (you might call it 'settings' or something like that) and add your form drop-down values as content nodes inside this master folder. Or you could create groups of these items in nested folders. Then you could use something like the uComponents multi-node-tree-picker data type on your document types to select groups of these nodes from which to build your form.
I know this is a brief explanation, but let us know if you decide to look into this avenue (or if Contour for some reason doesn't do what you need still) and you need more detail/clarification. There are many ways to skin this cat - it's just a case of helping you to find the right one :)
Thanks Dan, I'm sure there are convoluted ways to do this, there always is, but I have a simple requirement so I'd hoped for a simple solution. It seems all routes in Umbraco are complex by design - there's very little you can do without creating a new doctype, macro, template and xslt file - often all of these - plus a datatype for every form element with different options - and then spend hours linking them together. This unnecessary complexity stems from .NET (and is, according to MS employees, designed as a 'barrier to entry' for small firms) so please don't get me wrong - it's not Umbraco's fault. It's the best a .NET CMS can get and beats others hands down. It can't escape its undelying platform though, which makes some aspects, working with forms specifically, a time consuming pain in the proverbial.
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