2 simple web 2.0 mashups / tools to make your Blogger site more interactive

One of the dilemmas I had faced after publishing my blog on Blogger was how to integrate forms? A simple feedback or Contact Us form can go a long way in making your blog more user focused and interactive. I have found to simple methods to overcome this handicap. And yes you don’t need to be a coder to do this!

1.  Use formstack to build professional looking online forms:

A simple but very effective solution is offered by www.formstack.com . Formstack allows you to design and build forms online and then allows you to embed forms on any blog or website. The Process is very simple:

1. Sign up on Formstack.
2. Build your forms using the form builder.
3. Assign the email address where you want to send form data.
4. Select a suitable design template and Save your form.
5. Generate the code to embed on your Blog.

You are pretty much done with Formstack!  Now log in to your Blogger account:

1. On your blogger add a page using page widget.
2. Create a new page with the name “Contact Us” using pages widget. If you don’t have the widget already you can do so my going to Design > Add Widget and Select Pages Widget.
3. On the page editor click HTML source.
4. Paste the embed code generated from Formstack. And Voila! You have a working feedback form on Blogger!

Do a quick preview. You may have to do small adjustments to the form field lengths if there are any overlaps with your Blogger sidebar but that is simple. The Formstack form builder interface is so simple that you can quickly find your way for small UI twicks. You can view the contact us form on my blog http://xrecnet.blogspot.com .

2.  Use feedback tool from getsatisfaction.com

Get satisfaction is one of the most popular feedback tools on the Internet. Integrating this on blogger requires some careful template code embedding. The Integration process is simple though:

1. Sign up on getsatisfaction.com.
2. Generate the code for embedding.
3. Go to blogger Design  > Edit HTML
4. On template XML look for code.
5. Paste the code just before the and save the template and you have the feedback widget!

You can view both these forms in action on my blog http://xrecnet.blogspot.com . Do not hesitate to send me your feedback! Just use the form at http://xrecnet.blogspot.com/p/contact-us.html !