How About A Partial Update or Fully Automated Uploader?
I use WFB often for client websites. Sometimes I'll build a form, install it on a test page on the client's site, tell the client to check it out, then they come back with, "That's great, but could you change ... ?" Sometimes I also want to change a form after it's on a site. Okay, not sometimes - let's make that often.
The way things are now, we have to recompile the entire form, then replace all the code on our site with the recompiled code, even if all we've done is change the field order or the color of some text. This is far more involved than it needs to be. As you know, the watchwords of computerdom are "anything you do repeatedly, the computer can do better and faster."
Therefore, I have a couple of suggestions I hope will make WFB even better.
1.
Give Us A Partial Updater. Once we have saved/published a form, perhaps the program could track which files change whenever we make an update after that. When we are ready to post the changes to our site, perhaps we could have the option to replace only those files that have changed. We would, of course, need the path along with the file name. For small or even moderate changes to the form, this could save us a ton of time.
The next suggestion is more involved, but it would make the program infinitely more user-friendly.
2.
Add a Dedicated FTP Client To The Program. The FTP client would require us to enter the Username and Password for FTP access to the folder where the page containing our form lives, and the name of the file that has the page on it. As an example, let's say the file is at
http://www.samplesite.com/contact/index.php. We would then need to put either <ccwfb></ccwfb> or <div id="ccwfb"></div> tags in our HTML where we want our form to go.
Once we enter the Username, Password, and file name and path, that information is stored with the WFB form file (fb file). Whenever we elect to publish the form, the program would automatically upload all required files to our server, and insert the WFB script inside the appropriate tags in the designated file. It would do a full upload on first publication, and a partial upload on subsequent re-publishings.
You asked how you could make the product even better? This seems like it would be a super upgrade.
I hope you agree.
David
