Yeah! New features! But first, a word of caution…. PHP 4 is no longer supported in this an all future versions of Formidable. If you are running at least version 3.3 of WordPress, rest assured that you will have no problems with this change. However, if WordPress has prevented you from updating past version 3.2 with messages that it is not supported on your server, then you will also need to stop updating Formidable at this point until you can get your web host to update their version of PHP.

Ajax Submit

Ajax submit has been added. It can be enabled on a form-by-form basis. To enable ajax submit, go to the settings page for each form, and check the box to “submit this form with ajax.” File uploads will not yet be submitted via ajax.

Increased Security

Security has been increased. First, another vulnerability was found in Open Flash Charts. The safest option was to completely remove Open Flash, so all graphs will now use Google charts. Second, when a custom display is used to show entries, any included javascript will be automatically stripped before displaying on the page. If you are intentionally included javascript in your submitted entries, you can retain it in the custom display with keepjs=1. For example, if your field id is 125, you would use [125 keepjs=1] in your custom display.

Field Stats within Ranges

Added option to limit by ranges in the frm-stats shortcode. For example, this shortcode would only count entries where the value of field 45 was between 1 month and 3 days ago:
0
Dates, numbers, and text values can be used for the greater than and less than options. See more examples.

Additional Field Options

Dropdown fields include a checkbox to allow multiple options to be selected in that field. This switches the field to a multi-select field. The size of this field can also be customized in the field options.

The dropdown to “Allow Only One Entry for Each” field has been modified. All form fields have been removed from this dropdown, in favor of only using the “unique” checkbox in the field options.

Customizing the unique error message is now possible without custom code. It has been added as a global setting as well as an individual field setting.

Email Message Customization

Added buttons to insert default HTML or plain text for those who wish to modify the default message without starting from scratch. For more information on customizing the default message, see this page.

Allow external short codes in the email recipients box.

Additional Content Customizability

Added striphtml=1 for use within custom displays. This allows you to strip any HTML from user-submitted content before displaying it on your site.
Added shortcode option to get the field description with [125 show="description"]. This new option can be used in custom displays, email messages, or anywhere else you can insert field shortcodes.

You may now delete Formidable entries that were used to create post content without also deleting the created posts. Use the new “delete without post” link to delete only the entry. This link can be found on the view and edit entries pages in the back-end.

Custom CSS can now be added directly into the visual styling page in the Formidable global settings. Any CSS added here will not be overwritten when updating the Plugin.

Other Changes and Additions

• Fields with separate values have an extra column on entries page to show the saved value
• Added a link to the uploaded file in the entry edit form
• Added “like” and “not like” options to the conditional logic for hiding and showing fields
• Switched section headings and page breaks to use h3 tags by default instead of h2
• Switched rich text fields to default to TinyMCE
• Switched the field options bulk edit to use the admin ajax url to minimize plugin conflicts
• Show the taxonomy name even if it is not linked to a post
• Fixed post content replacement when entry is updated instead of only on creation
• Moved all stripslashes and unserializing to the point the data is retrieved from the database
• Added quotes around the menu position number to minimize menu position conflicts with other plugins
• View the full Changelog

Version 1.06.09 should be officially available within a couple of weeks as long as we don’t run into any big bugs. Thanks to all those who have reported issues. If you still see issues in this version, please report them in the help desk.

We are continually working to reduce the number of questions being asked by simplifying and adding functionality. A common, time-consuming problem users are running into during the form-building process, is with the email content. We’ve seen many questions from those who just want to mildly tweak the default message, but don’t want to rebuild it in it’s entirety. There is now a way to do so. Two buttons have been added in the sidebar box for “Default HTML” and “Default Plain.” These buttons will insert a generated message with the fields that are currently in your form, as the default message would look if it were sent out at that moment.

Another common question is in regards to where to place any custom CSS. We generally instruct that it be placed in your theme’s style.css file, but there are those who update their themes and lose customizations. We have added a box in the Formidable -> Global Settings -> Styling page, where any CSS can be added and saved with other Formidable settings. CSS added to this “Custom CSS” section will not be overridden when updating Formidable Pro.

The frm-stats shortcode has also been beefed up to not only allow a single value to be specified, but also ranges of values. For example, if you have a date field in your form, and would like a value counted only within a certain date range, that is now possible with a shortcode that looks like this:
0 (include values from field 50 when the date field(id of 45) is between 2013-02-01 and 2013-03-01)
0 (include values from field 50 when the date field is between 1 month and three days ago)
0 (include values from field 50 when the date field is within the last month)

You can see a full list of changes in the change log.

Since this is a beta version, it is not available via automatic update, but can be downloaded from the downloads page and installed manually.

Version 1.06.09 is now ready for beta. But before installing it, there are a few things you should be aware of. First, PHP 4 is no longer supported. If you are running at least version 3.3 of WordPress, rest assured that you will have no problems with this change. However, if WordPress has prevented you from updating with messages that it is not supported on your server, then you will also need to stop updating Formidable at this point until you can get your web host to update their version of PHP.

Second, if you are using any graphs, be aware they will all switch to Google graphs. More security vulnerabilities have been uncovered in Open Flash charts, so we decided it would be safest to completely remove them. When updating manually, you should delete the whole plugin before installing the new version so the vulnerable files will be removed from your site. The WordPress auto-update feature will automatically delete the old plugin files before installing a new version.

Lastly, of course you want to know what features have been added. First and foremost: AJAX submit! Dropdown fields have an added checkbox to change into a multiple box.

More security has been added for those accepting untrusted user submissions and displaying them using custom displays. All javascript will be automatically stripped when displaying. This can be overridden by adding keepjs=1 to the field shortcode [25 keepjs=1]. Also, some users have reported the desire to strip all HTML from user submissions as well. Adding striphtml=1 will remove any HTML added into that field. Both of these do not permanently change the original submission, but only remove the javascript and HTML for display purposes only.

You can see a full list of changes in the change log.

Since this is a beta version, it is not available via automatic update, but can be downloaded from the downloads page and installed manually.

A new and very much improved version of the signature add-on has been released. It originally contained an unaltered version of a third-party script, but has now been overhauled.

Added Options

Options have been added into the “Field Options” for each signature field. The options include changing the height and width, naming the tabs, or even removing them.

Clean up

Since a signature field should default to a signature, the drawing tab is now the default. The field to type into has been moved inside the “Type It” tab to further clean the field up, and validation removed from the script and moved into Formidable to make it more seamless. The size of the signature box will scale down depending on how much room is available for it, and display the signatures in the same size they were generated.

This update is available via auto-update from your WordPress admin.

Full Change log

Version 1.06.06 includes a few highly and long-requested features as well as a big step toward eliminating custom database tables.

Email Notification Overhaul

Conditional logic in now available on email notifications. This logic is similar to the conditional logic on showing and form fields. There is no longer a difference between autoresponder and admin notifications, and you can have any number of email variations. Of course the inline logic still works in the email messages, as well as the [default-message] shortcode which has been extended to work in any email.

Multiple Files per Field

Upload files have a new option to “allow multiple fields to be uploaded to this field.” Checking this box presents users with a new upload field each time they select a file, the same way the upload works in our help desk.

These images can be displayed in custom displays in a couple of different ways. First, the easy way is to automatically include the HTML with [25 html=1] (where 25 is the ID of the upload field). Second, is the more advanced option to define your own HTML.
<img src=”[25 sep='" /><img src="']” />

Custom Displays switched to Custom Post Type

Over the next year or so, we would like to phase out all custom database tables in favor of custom post types. We’ve started this process with custom displays. Not only does this eliminate an extra database table, but also inherits many extra benefits including revisions, previews, bulk editing, and saving as draft. The shortcodes will continue to work, or you can simply use the page generated for your custom display. These custom displays are not listed anywhere on the front-end of your site.

The “Customized content” box on the “Create posts” settings tab will now be saved to the post content if no field is selected to be used as the post content. In this case, changes made to the post content directly on the WP posts page will not be reflected in the Formidable entry or on the front-end of your site.

Additional Shortcodes

A few shortcodes have been added to help make simple and complex applications easier.

• Get a single value from an entry.
• Set a value to use in [get param=something]
• Show all detail for a single entry in the same format as the default email message.

Extended Conditional Logic

The conditional logic for showing and hiding fields now includes hidden, text, number, email, website, and time fields. It also supports selecting a blank option to make it possible to show one field if anything has been selected in another instead of requiring a specific option to be selected.

Other changes that may affect your site

Two additional changes may affect the way your form and calendar custom display are currently displayed. First, the generic css classes like “text” and “date” have been removed from input fields. These were originally added for future use, but they have been causing too may problems with theme styling conflicts. This may affect you if you added custom styling using these classes, or if you were depending on similar css from your theme.

Localization has been added to the custom display calendar, so it will now start on day of the week selected on the WordPress Settings -> General page. The calendar previously started on Sunday, but the default WordPress setting is Monday. Please check your calendar to make sure it starts on the day you would like.

Full Change Log

v1.06.07

Version 1.06.07 is a bug fix release.

• With each update, we have had a handful of people who get stuck in an update loop, unable to get the pro version installed. From here on out, the automatic update feature will be smoother with only one-step updates.
• Added mb_split fallback for servers without mbstring installed. This function is used to truncate text throughout the plugin.

Full Change Log

Version 1.06.06 is now to release candidate status. We only have a week for final testing in order to beat the WordPress 3.5 release scheduled for December 5th. This version probably should have been called 1.7, but we didn’t plan on all the last-minute feature additions.

The parts that need the most widespread testing across multiple sites and servers, are the new custom displays and email notifications. Feedback and bug reports are welcome. Please let us know in the help desk about any bugs you may come across!

Full change log

Download and manually install

Two highly requested features have been added into this beta release: multiple file uploads and unlimited email messages with email routing (finally!).

Multiple file upload can be enabled by opening the field options for any upload field and checking the box to “allow multiple files to be uploaded to this field”. This will enable a file upload similar to the one seen in our help desk.

These images can be shown in custom displays in a couple of different ways. First, the simple option that automatically adds the HTML to show an image:
[25 html=1]

Alternatively, you can customize this HTML in an advanced way with something like this:
<img src=”[25 sep='" /><img src="']” />

The email notifications are in the same place as before, but are formatted a bit differently to match the updated custom display format with the list of fields in the sidebar instead of in drop downs above each field.

We are excited about these changes and the elimination of more custom code that we have been recommending for conditional email routing. Please let us know in the help desk if you run into any issues.

Full change log

Download and manually install

The next version of Formidable is finally ready for beta. We are moving towards removing our custom database tables and using custom post types instead. This version includes migrating custom displays to custom post types. This also adds a few extra bonus features including save as draft, revisions, and preview.

The function of the “customized content” box on the “create posts” settings tab has been a common question and source of confusion. This has been updated to save to the post content if no field is selected as the post content field.

A new shortcode has been added to assist with getting values from forms. This is intended for use as a default value to populate fields with values from other forms. There are a few different ways to specify the correct entry to get the value from: entry id, user id, or ip.
[ frm-field-value field_id=25 user_id=current]
[ frm-field-value field_id=25 entry_id=140]
[ frm-field-value field_id=25 ip=1] (Use the current user’s IP)

In a custom display:
[ frm-field-value field_id=25 user_id=[28 show=ID]]
[ frm-field-value field_id=25 ip="[ip]“]

Generic classes from input fields like “text” and “date” have been removed to alleviate conflicts with some themes. For any who are using custom styling on input fields using these classes, be sure to update them!

Full change log

Download and manually install

Several add-ons have been updated: PayPal, AWeber, and Registration.

PayPal out of Beta

The PayPal add-on is now official. It’s been updated to work well with Formidable changes including separate values and redirecting. Fields using separate values can now be used in the conditional logic, and IPN notifications will work correctly with the latest version of Formidable.

AWeber Fixes

The AWeber add-on has had a few fixes as well including a W3 Total Cache conflict resolved, and updating the authentication code on the settings page is supported. All the AWeber class names have been updated to avoid potential conflicts with other plugins.

Registration Updates

• Added the frmreg_new_role filter on the user role new users will be created with.
• Only show user meta one time on the profile page if multiple forms are being used for the same user meta.
• Fixed bug with first and last name display names that was piecing the display name together incorrectly.

Due to our continually increasing user base and support load, we are scheduling a price increase for September 1 so we can continue providing the best support possible. We have seen very few requests from users who are beyond their first year, so the license will continue to cover lifetime support and updates.

This increase will not affect users who currently hold an unlimited license, but the upgrade price from single- to unlimited-site license will also be increasing.

The new prices will be as follows:

Single Site $47

Unlimited Site/Priority support $117

Upgrade single to unlimited $70

I really want a signature box. I really like formible’s pricing. However the signature box is way too small for my clients to use, isn’t a mandatory field and you shouldn’t need to click Type or Draw.

Use one larger box with simple instruction like “Signature (use mouse to draw your signature)”and another open field with instructions that says “Type signature”. You don’t actually really need the ‘type signature field as that can be handled by other means. You just need one much larger box that requires users to draw their signature.

What you have is mostly right but not enough to make me purchase your plugin.  Also you had another posting about this and your staff didn’t seem to realize how important this topic is. Lines like “you are the only person that has suggested this” is irrelevant. It should be based on if the comment makes a lot of sense or not. In this specific case you either have a plugin that forces users to draw out their signature or you don’t.   Right now you don’t!

I guess the workaround is for me to add a field that says “You must draw out your signature or your form will be ignored.” However I really don’t want to do that.

Hi,

How can require the user to agree to an agreement with Formidable Pro?

Thanks,

Jakob

Hi,

I was looking and understanding your plugin. It is great plugin. I will be adding soon in my temple’s website.

Just one question I have. It will be great help if you can answer it. Also it will be part of decision to purchase pro version.

Some time we need pre-populated form with existing data. Let me explain it.

We are doing many seminar registration using formidable forms. We have your info in my previous seminar’s registration. So we like to use it to register you in second seminar. So what we need is to send you your presonlized link like http://xyx.com/form/id/212 (or something similar.)

Once you get this link. Click on it. And you will find most of fields are already populated with your information we have. Then you have to update it and complete remaining fields. Then submit it.

Can we achieve above task using formidable forms?

Please reply me if you have any query.

Thank you,

Mehul

I was just wondering how the password field worked.

Rather than use captcha, I’d like to simply ask a question that I know all legitimate users will know the answer to and make the form submit only on receipt of the correct answer. What would be the best way to do this? I thought I could use the password field, but not sure.

We at Strategy11 focus on you, our clients. We make every effort to keep our prices as low as possible to allow anyone to leverage the tools offered in Formidable Pro. The time has come to balance the amount of time we spend on support with the amount of time we spend developing new features and enhancements. To balance these two important aspects, we are introducing paid yearly support.

Each licence holder will receive free support for 1 year from his or her original purchase date. After your support period has expired, you will need to renew your support license only if you need to contact us directly for support. This change will only affect users who use our support beyond their first year.

This change will in no way affect your site, or the way Formidable runs there. Lifetime updates and access to existing help desk topics are still included with every license purchase, so chances are, you will never have to do anything you aren’t already doing. Those who wish to have access to our support after that year will need to renew their support subscription. It is important to note that these added support costs will NOT be billed automatically, but only when you choose. If you come across a bug while outside of your support term, please let us know and we will be happy to provide a fix/workaround.

This change will help reduce our support load and allow more time for improvements, new features, and updates that will benefit all Formidable Pro users. We hope all new and existing users will understand and support us in this change.

If it has been over a year since you purchased a license and you would like continued support, click here.

Prettier

This release includes a lot of improvements to what you see. You’ll notice loading indicators when adding or selecting lists, and an improvement in the layout, and adding an removing lists and conditional logic.

Faster

We’ve also made improvements for the load time of the form settings page, for those forms that are not setup to send to MailChimp. Now there is only communication with the MailChimp api when you are using it that the form you are currently editing. We also reduced the general overhead by removing globals and definitions that were no longer needed.

As always, the full changelog for this add-on can be found here. If you are running MailChimp 1.01 and at least v1.07.0 of Formidable, this update will be available automatically within 24 hours. Otherwise, you will need to update manually, by following steps 3-5 here for the Formidable MailChimp plugin.

We’ve gotten a little out-of-hand with this release, and squeezed a lot more into it than we should have. This really should be labeled as version 1.08. We’ve spent a lot of time fine tuning, and perfecting a lot of UI aspects that we just didn’t love. But now we do, and you will too. Check it out.

So, on top of all the features outlined in the first beta release, now there are even more. But before trying out this version, update WordPress. If you don’t want to update WordPress, make sure you are running at least version 3.3. If that isn’t possible for you, please do not continue updating Formidable.

Styling and UI

We have updated the default styling, but you won’t see it unless you go to the Formidable -> Global settings -> Form styling page, and click the new “Reset to Default” button.

On the back-end, we’ve placed the form title in a consistent place, and moved the form switcher drop down into the nav. We want it to be easy to get anywhere you need to be quickly and easily. You will see other UI enhancements throughout the back-end, including new icons on the form builder page, and rearranged field options for increased simplicity.

While on our simplification rampage, we renamed “Custom Display” to “View.” This is a change we’ve been wanting to make for a long time, but our docs will be a bit behind until the official 1.07.02 release.

Also, something you may need to know if you have custom styling…. The radio and check box inputs are now inside the label tags, instead of following them. This change is for more standard HTML, which allows for easier integration with third-party styling.

Performance

We are always working on improving performance. You will see a huge improvement in the ajax load time of long forms, and their usability when loading is complete.

Shortcode Enhancements

The form shortcode now includes the same option included in the views shortcode that allows you to set a value which can be used in your form. You can include a value from a view that you want to include in your form. For example, use Please select a valid form“] in your view, and insert [get param="myname"] in your first name field.

PHP dates are now allowed in inline conditionals in conjunction with the created and updated dates.
[if created-at less_than="-1 month"]….[/if created-at]

More Hooks

More documentation and examples to come, but here’s a summary.

• frm_uploading_files: added to the text in the file loading box so the default text “Uploading Files. Please Wait.” can be replaced.
• frm_radio_class and frm_checkbox_class: add classes the radio and check box options. (Used in our new Bootstrap add-on)
• frm_default_field_opts: used for adding new options to the field options. (Also used in our new Bootstrap add-on)
• frm_send_to_not_email: if the email recipient is not an email address, this hook is fired. (Used in the next version of our Twilio add-on for sending texts!)

See the full change log.

Download Now

This is a beta version, so it is not available via automatic update. You can download from the downloads page.

We have been hearing of a lot of people working on Formidable-Bootstrap integration. We have created an add-on that automatically adds all the Bootstrap classes and loads the Bootstrap styling, to make beautiful forms even faster and easier.

Normally, a value can be added before and/or after the input by directly inserting them into the customizable HTML. This add-on includes an extra setting in the field options to do this simply and instantly.

The settings illustrated above will create a field like this:

The full Bootstrap 3.0.2 css is included, which means there is a lot more you can use that you will need to see the Bootstrap docs for. A lot the the available classes will work when you insert them into the “CSS layout classes” box in your field options. Specifically, the sizing options found here.

Enjoy!

Note: This add-on requires the changes included in Formidable v1.07.02 which is currently in beta. Please make sure you are running at least v1.07.02b2 of Formidable before using this add-on.

Download Now

These two released are primarily for bug fixes and updates for compatibility. If you are running a version of Formidable below 1.07, then you will be able to update automatically. Otherwise, this update includes updates for automatic updates for future releases.

All text sent to Paypal is now evaluated for special characters, and sent in a way that PayPal will interpret correctly. Also, although it was already low, this release also includes increased optimization to further decrease the plugin footprint for more efficiency and decreased load.

See the full change log here.

Download Now

After the Formidable v1.08 release, we plan to add to and beef up our ecommerce integrations, including a major overhaul to this add-on for more plug-and-play ability.

Save Drafts

The major feature in this release is the option to save entries as drafts. You can enable logged-in users to save a draft by going to the settings for your form, and checking the box to “Allow logged-in users to save drafts.” This will add a “Save Draft” link next to the submit button. Each user is only allowed one draft per form, so they will automatically see their draft when they return to the form.

Save draft settings

UI Improvements

The default form styling has been updated, and the icons removed from the error messages. To see this updated styling, go to Formidable -> Global Settings -> Form Styling, and click the new “Reset to Default” button.

Updated UI and Styling

WordPress 3.8 has moved to font icons, so we’ve followed suite for a seamless experience. This will help your admin pages look better on high DPI screens and load faster everywhere without loading large images.

We’ve also added more consistency across all Formidable admin pages, with the from switcher box included in the nav bar.

Custom Phone Formatting

Phone format settings

A “format” option has been added in the field options for phone fields. If you would like a certain format like 555-555-5555, then simply add it in the format box. You can use any numbers in this option that you would like, and any format. If there are multiple formats you would like to allow in a single field, you can insert a regular expression in the format field. Just make sure your expressions starts with a ^, so Formidable will know whether you are using a static format, or a regular expression.

Another added perk or using a set format, is that an input mask will be added to the field so your users know what format you would like them to use.

Extra Form Shortcode Options

The Please select a valid form shortcode already had the option to only include certain fields. But when you have a large form, and only want to exclude 3 of those fields, it gets to be difficult to manage. Now you can quickly exclude those three fields by adding exclude_fields into your shortcode:

    Heading
        
    
    
    

    


    Details
        
    
     
    

    


    Thumbnail Photo
        
    
    

    


    Thumbnail Name
        
    
    
    

    


    Full Photo Name
        
    
    
    

    


    Full Sized Photo
        
    
    

    


    Order
        
    
    

    


    Button Label
        
    
    
    

    
    


    Link
        
    
    
    

    
    


    Include on New Features page?
        
    
    
Yes
    
No
    
    
    


    Include in More Features list?
        
    
    
Yes
    
No
    
    
    


    Image Class
        
    
    
    

    
    

Another enhancement makes it a bit easier to set dynamic default values. You can add any value into the shortcode with:

    Heading
        
    
    
    

    


    Details
        
    
     
    

    


    Thumbnail Photo
        
    
    

    


    Thumbnail Name
        
    
    
    

    


    Full Photo Name
        
    
    
    

    


    Full Sized Photo
        
    
    

    


    Order
        
    
    

    


    Button Label
        
    
    
    

    
    


    Link
        
    
    
    

    
    


    Include on New Features page?
        
    
    
Yes
    
No
    
    
    


    Include in More Features list?
        
    
    
Yes
    
No
    
    
    


    Image Class
        
    
    
    

    
    

After you have values added to your shortcode, you can show them in your fields using [get param="field1"] and [get param="anything"]. This is especially helpful when you are inserting your form in a custom display, and would like it to get default values from a previously added entry.

View Enhancements

We’ve been thinking for a while that the “custom display” terminology just isn’t very intuitive. So, custom displays are now called views.

The pagination on views has been updated to be unique, so going to the next page on one view will not affect any others you may have on your page.

Using data from entries fields for filtering the entries shown in a view has also been simplified. Now you can use the value in the field instead of being limited to only the entry key or ID of the linked entry.

Other Cool Stuff

• The stats shortcode supported filtering by any field values in the form. Now, graphs can be filtered as well.
• When a form is duplicated, all the email settings including the content are switched to values for the new form.
• The markup for radio and check box fields has changed, with the input inside the label since this is more generalizable.
• The minimum version of WordPress has been increased to 3.3.

New Hooks

• frm_radio_class and frm_checkbox_class: Add classes on the div around the check boxes or radio buttons.
• frm_submit_button_class: Add classes to the submit button with better compatibility with other plugins adding classes here as well.
• frm_default_field_opts: Easily add an option for fetching and saving options on a field. HTML for the option is still required.
• frm_send_to_not_email: For notifications that are triggered on non-emails. We use this hook for SMS notifications in our improved Twilio add-on (more information coming soon).
• frm_back_button_class: Add classes to the back button on muli-paged forms.
• frm_uploading_files: Change the text with the file uploading progress bar.

Note: This version requires at least version 3.3 of WordPress. Do not update if you will not also be updating WordPress.

Full Change Log

To update, visit the plugins page in your WordPress admin for automatic update or follow the advanced installation instructions.