Google Drive includes an option to create a form which can be added to your blog to collect information from your visitors. The data you collect through your form will be available for you as a spreadsheet or other documentation within your Google Drive account.
Forms are a good way to collect information from readers of your blog. For instance, you can add a survey to get feedback, add a contact form to allow for private comments, or include a form to collect addresses for a mailing list.
There are many tools available to generate forms to include on your blog and an online search will provide you with many results. Besides Google Drive, Jotform (free) and Formstack offer similar form generator tools.
Create Form
Updated 23 October 2014
In Google Drive, open the Create menu and select Form. If you don't see the Create menu, open the New menu.
To create a Contact form, for example, go to the Add Item and select one of the options. Text is a short answer option good for Name and Email fields. Paragraph Text is a longer option good for general comments.
The Multiple Choice, Checkboxes, and Choose From List items are good for creating custom surveys.
Embed Form
The code to embed the form on a blog or website is generated by Google Drive. When the form is complete, open the File menu and select Embed.
Copy the iframe code provided.
In Typepad, create a New Page and click to the HTML tag. Please note the Rich Text editor should not be used when adding the code for the form. To see the form as it will appear on the published blog, click the Preview button.
Paste the form code into the Body field. The width and height of the form can be adjusted to fit your blog's design. In the code, edit the width="760" height="756" section.
After you finish your page, click Publish.
Similarly, the form can be embedded within a Post. To place a smaller form in your blog's sidebar, you can use the Embed Your Own HTML module at Design > Content.
Submitting the Form
Because the form is embedded via an IFRAME the reader will remain on your blog when they submit the content of the form. They will see a "thank you" note appear in the space the form previously occupied.
Link to Page
Once the page is published, click the View Page link to open the page in a new window. Copy the URL for the Page.
To add the link below the banner image, go to Design > Content and click the pencil icon to edit the Navigation Bar module. Add the new link to your page and click OK. Finally, click Save changes to update your blog.
You can also add the link to your sidebar using a Links TypeList.
Additional Information
See the Google Drive help section on creating forms for more details.
Not quite what you are looking for? Check out these other articles:
- Looking for information on account billing, see the billing overview article.
- For details on displaying excerpts of posts in the main content column, see the article on post excerpts.