Creating online forms with Google Docs and WuFoo

Designing the login form was one thing, but how about if you wanted to create something a little more lengthy and use it to obtain meaningful data from your readers. Well you may just find what you’re looking for using Google Doc’s new form builder. This is just one of the products that Google offers as part of their online productivity suite. As always you will find that the interface is clean and only takes a couple minutes to understand how to get it up and running. You can also specify required fields which is a n](http://www.mikebobiney.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/gdocs_forms_builder.gif)

The form results are displayed to you in a nice pie chart. The actual data is output into a spreadsheet behind the scenes if you need to use it for any other reason which is a nice touc](http://www.mikebobiney.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/gdocs_forms_chart_result.gif)

An alternative service that I also recommend is called WuFoo. This service is free to try and allows for further customization of your web forms. I kid you not when I say that seemingly everything that you could ever want is included with this service such as phone number and date fields which include custom validation messages built in. There is a monthly fee as your usage increases however.

For me personally, Google Docs does just fine for my needs. Feel free to give your ice cream preference if you’d like to try out a sample form.

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