Design, Coding, SEO and Social Media Marketing, WordPress & Facebook

In researching the best options for online form-creation services for Facebook Static FBML tabs, I determined that the two best were, in my opinion, JotForm and Allforms.

Although JotForm offered the most attractive interface for form creation, the most flexibility for design, and more features, I liked Allforms because it supports form validation, as well as CAPTCHA. And, if you're comfortable working with CSS and HTML, you can do further customization of the Allforms form you create.

Another plus is you can create a form with HTML and CSS and use Allform's free service to create just the form processor. Pretty cool....

Setting up Allforms

Allforms offers two tiers of service, free and "Plus" (Compare Allform's Account Features.).

• Register for an account (click "Register" at top right). There are two options: Free and "Plus" (Price comparison);
• After registering, click through to create your first form.
• Options: All the options and styling choices are on the one screen. You add new questions via the left column, and you style the form (just colors) in the right menu (the color options say "For Plus Accounts Only" but these options work in a free account, as well. At least they did for me).
• Name Your Form: Give your form a name, replacing "Sample Form";
• Add Questions: Use the "Add a Question" in the left nav to add a new question to your form.

Color Options: You can change the hexadecimal color options in the right menu to your taste:

Unfortunately, you can't get rid of the numbers! (Except by manually editing the HTML code generated.)

• Form Validation - Required Fields: Under "Required Questions" set the required fields.
• Success Page URL: Set the "Custom Success Page" URL to the page where the user is directed after submitting the form;
• Email Recipient: Set "E-mail Addresses" to whomever you want to receive the form data via email;
• Subject Line: Set "E-mail Subject" to the Subject Line for the email you receive from the form submission;
• HTML or Plain Text Email Format: Set "E-mail Format" to HTML for best results, IF your email reader supports HTML email (most do these days);
• CAPTCHA: "Enable Anti-Spam" Validation is mandatory with the free account;
• When you've finished adding all your questions and chosen all options, click "Continue";

Copy the CSS and HTML code for your form

On next screen, under "Putting the form directly onto your website or webpages" copy the code in the box. Paste this code, as is, into your Static FBML box.

You can check out our Allforms example on Facebook.

Allforms Recipient Email - HTML Format

Allforms Support

For further support with Allforms, please check out their support forums and FAQs.

If you find that any information in this tutorial is incorrect, inaccurate or could be improved, please let me know.