A guy called Court has put together a video tutorial and article on using TDO Mini Forms, my free Wordpress plugin.

The video is pretty good too as it shows you how to create a submission form and an edit form. I think I may be adding a link to this on the FAQ!

As a footnote to the video, the latest version 0.13.7 does include Custom Field editing and the compare view for edit posts is now working.

Also check out his site for indie musicians called indilean that uses TDO Mini Forms too.

A new release of TDO Mini Forms should be available very shortly from wordpress.org. Several people reported that upgrading to 0.13.6 resulted in a blank page appearing for their wordpress site. This release is specifically to fix that.

I’m sorry about this, but it didn’t appear on my test server before release.

It’s been a while since the previous release and each release seems to take longer and longer before it’s ready, but it was officially released on Wordpress.org Extend yesterday, so you should be able to automatically update today.

The big change in this release is that you can now created Edit forms that allow you to modify Custom Fields as text areas, fields, checkbox or a select list. It took a while to do because I had to refactor the Custom Field widget into the new class I designed for widgets. The power of this feature should be obvious for any sort of CMS style use of Wordpress as Custom Fields are incredible powerful. The plugin also keeps a history of Custom Field changes made using the plugin and you can compare between versions, something Wordpress doesn’t do itself. So you can rollback edits as required (and also moderate incoming edits).

I also refactored out all the individual field types so that fixes and features for text areas, for example, can be shared among all widgets. For a start, text fields can be used to take an email, a url or a number. I haven’t gotten around to a date/time combination yet, but it’s certainly possible.

I’ve also integrated some code improvements and hope to continue to try and improve the code base into the future. I’ve improved the AJAX code that is used for forms, hopefully preventing people from double posts (a problem that has cropped up a lot recently for people posting to the forum). The plugin also only loads the admin pages and functions only if someone with admin rights is logged in.

You can check the changelog for a full list of changes (though some minor improvements seemed to have not gotten onto the list, sorry about that).

Again, and it seems to be a recurring thing, I have to apologies that I haven’t got through to every support request on the forum. I do my best, but I really only have a few hours a week to work on TDO Mini Forms and my time gets divided then between actually implementing features or improvements or going through the forum (and I often side on working with the code instead). I know people have offered to pay for improvements, but I cannot currently commit to deadlines as I’m working a full time job at the same time.

Please keep in mind that this plugin is free and any support I do manage to provide is also free. If you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!

Yep. 0.13.2 is out today. See the (new and improved wordpress 2.8) changelog for details of whats in this release.

I have to apologise for my lack of responses on the numerous support requests. I’m about a month behind but I will get through them, so hang on! Life, work and my other hobby projects are all overloaded these days.

You can grab the latest version of tdo-mini-forms from Wordpress.org right now!

I’m sure within minutes the internet will collapse but I’ve finally got it done. v0.13 adds the ability to edit posts and has improved moderation screen. I say that with a big sigh because there is still a lot to do to finish off the backend, improve the post editing and finally tackle the long list of bugs that has accumulated, but with this version at least you can start to play with editing.

Enjoy! And any issues report them to the support forums or even try out twitter (hashtag #tdomf).

Please keep in mind that this plugin is free and any support I provide is also free. If you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!

I’ve been testing TDO Mini Forms (a Wordpress plugin) on a live server for a few days now. Spam protection seems to work, which is great. I only have two things left to do before I do an official release: update the readme.txt and update the ReCapatcha widget to work with the editing form.

But to get people going, you can download a beta now from the development branch.

I’ve also been sucked into twitter! @thedeadone – I will be “tweeting” (is that the right verb?) using the hashtag #tdomf anything relevant to TDO Mini Forms. (‘tdomf’ is the tag I’ve always used to tag stuff relevant to TDO Mini Forms online).

Any comments and feedback welcome, but don’t expect major changes before the next release (which should be very soon!). Thank you.

Please keep in mind that this plugin is free and any support I provide is also free. If you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!

Version 0.12.5 of the my Wordpress plugin TDO-Mini-Forms has just been made available. (It may just take a few minutes as I’ve just committed to the Wordpress.org SVN).

This version adds four new widgets:

• An Excerpt Widget – allows submitters to supply their own excerpt
• Comments Management Widget – enable/disable comments and pings for posts submitted from this form and even allow users to chose if they wish to enable comments
• ReCaptcha Widget – it’s been asked for so many times. This integrates the ReCaptcha service into your forms to help fight spam
• Subscribe-to-Comments Widget – this widget integrates with the ever-popular Subscribe-to-Comments 2.1 plugin to allow submitters be automatically subscribed to followup comments via email

Also these widgets were updated:

• Category Widget: Include Field enabled and a sort (and sort by) option added
• Tag Widget: Now includes options for default tags, required tags and even disabling user adding tags.

There are a few other little updates which you can check out on the Version Log. I still have quite number of entries in my Work Queue left but I’m planning to move on and look at post editing, the last big big feature. I think now is a good time to do it rather than spend so much effort adding little features and with Wordpress 2.6 revision history feature now in full operation, allowing users to edit posts should be a dream.

Don’t forget, this plugin is free, however if you found it useful you can show your appreciation via a small donation or buying me a book!

I managed to get through all the support requests on the local forums and on wordpress.org with regards the TDO Mini Forms plugin. So along with that and what I had planned it seems I have my work cut out for me. The good news is that TDOMF required no updates for Wordpress 2.6.x.

What I’m intending to work on (but not necessarily in this order):

• Fix Import/Export Form and tdomfinfo()
• Extract Widget
• Warnings in Admin UI (pretty critical at this point to stem the number of support requests)
  • Custom Field Error checking (empty key/title, same key/title)
  • If all ERRORs turned on
  • Form configuration changed but Form Hacker not updated
• Problem with AJAX and using the Capatcha Widget
• Rolling in French localisation updates from Laurent
• Preventing multiple revisions of posts because of submission

What I’ve also put on my current plate (but may not get done next release or even the release after that):

• Bug: Internet Explorer sometimes gives “Use FireFox” on submission page
• Using the Capatcha from the Recaptcha plugin
• Including Error, Validation and Style messages in Form Hacker
• Fixing the Time calculation for queuing post
• Comments and Pings Widget (change defaults, give option to submitter etc.)
• Bug: Small fix required in tdomf-categories-widget.php lines
• Bug: No sidebars appearing for widget configuration in Internet Explorer 7
• Bug: Since Wordpress 2.6.x, there have been some conflicts reported with other plugins
• Bug: Conflict using TinyMCE with AJAX
• Bug: Strange behaviour of widgets on fresh install of wp2.6.1
• Bug: Report of “output already started” errors from tdomf-db.php on line 333″
• Update the tag widget with some new features like setting it to required.
• Bug: Upload-link error occuring for some users

However, if some of these issues are critical to you, the best way to get me to up the priority is to donate (there is a link within the plugin if you hadn’t seen it) and tell me which one you need fixing!

Download now from Wordpress.org!

Requires at least Wordpress v2.8.6 and tested up to Wordpress v2.8.6.

This plugin allows you to add highly customisable forms that work with your Wordpress Theme to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit and edit posts and pages. New posts are kept in "draft" until an admin can publish them (also configurable). Likewise edits can be kept be automatically kept as revisions until an admin approves them. It can optionally use Akismet to check if submissions and contributions are spam. TDO Mini Forms can be used to create "outside-the-box" uses for Wordpress, from Contact Managers, Ad Managers, Collaborate Image Sites, Submit Links, etc.

0.13.7 contains a patch for sites that see a blank page after upgrading

The biggest change in version 0.13.6 is the ability to use Custom Fields in an Edit Form (i.e. allow Custom Field editing). It even keeps revision history of Custom Fields to allow for moderation and reverting to previous versions. Additionally a Custom Field TextField can be restricted to a number and the Custom Field Hidden can execute php code. Check the Changelog for a full list of changes.

TDO Mini Forms has been used to turn Wordpress into a Forum, Contact Manager!

The plugin provides an extensive moderation view so administrators and editors can see posts and edits awaiting approval and publish or delete them. Administrators can also ban specific users and IPs from using the form. Administrators can also "Trust" specific users. This means that when they use the form, their posts are automatically published. This does not give them any other rights or permissions using the Wordpress software, it only affects usage of the form. This applies to user and IP bans as well. There is even an option to automatically trust users after so many approved submissions and edits.

Administrators can configure the forms using drag and drop "widgets". They are based on the same model as Wordpress' built-in Theme widgets and it is possible to write your own.

Registered users have access to a "Your Submissions" page which lists their current submissions and edits awaiting approval and links to their approved submissions.

• Demo Site

Features

• Submission and Editing of Posts and Pages
• Integration with the GeoMashup plugin
• Integration with Subcribe-to-Comments 2.1 plugin
• Integration with Akismet and reCaptcha to prevent Spam
• Highly customisable: Create your forms using a Widget interface and then hack it to make it work how you like!
• Create as many forms as you like.
• Import and Export form configurations
• Put a form in your sidebar using a widget for your Theme or put the form in a page or post.
• Submit posts with alternative permalinks (great for link sites)
• Simple Question and/or Image Captcha.
• Add Custom Fields to your Forms.
• QuickTags support for Forms.
• Upload Files and can be attached to posts. Uses Wordpress' core to create thumbnails if applicable.
• Submitters can be notified if post approved or rejected.
• Allow users to select category and tags.
• Ban users and IPs.
• Control what roles can access the form.
• Can automatically create a page with form for you.
• Can automatically modified author template tag with info about submitter.
• Can, optionally, automatically allow submissions to be published.
• Throttle number of submissions by user and/or IP
• Optionally queue publishing of posts
• Numerous widgets for your theme, including a list of the top submitters
• And many more...

For Installation, Screenshots, FAQ, Full Version History and Known Bugs, please check the included readme.txt or the Wordpress.org page for the plugin.

For Support (and live demo), please see the Forums.

This plugin has been downloaded 92,489 times.