Weekly update – 28 January 2022

[ryan]

This week's commits include fixes for 8 reported issues and a couple new $sanitizer methods for entity encoding values in arrays. I mentioned earlier that I'd like to try and get a new master version out early this year and that's still the case. I've been successfully migrating some of the production sites that I work on to the dev branch, and so far, so good. Please let me know how it works for you. We're on track for a new master version hopefully soon.

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a module I was working on for automatically saving front-end forms in progress. For the moment, it's it's called FormAutoSaver, but maybe I'll come up with a better name (or not). It emails the person filling out the form with one or two reminders with links to finish it if they leave it before submitting it. The emails are template-file based so fully under your control, and the delay in sending 1-2 reminders is also fully configurable, whether hours or days. This module is essentially finished and now I'm just writing the documentation. I already have it in use on 1 site and it's made a helpful difference, not just in getting people to finish their forms, but also in helping us to analyze where people tend to get stuck and stop filling out the form. It also comes with an admin tool that lets you browse the forms in progress and see where they are at. Whether you want to increase the completion rate of of any particular form(s), or you want to identify bottlenecks, I think you'll find tool helpful. You don't have to design your form for it, as it will work with any existing form. I expect to have this posted into the ProDevTools board as soon as next week. 

Thanks for reading this short update and have a great weekend!

[teppo]

10 minutes ago, ryan said:

I've been successfully migrating some of the production sites that I work on to the dev branch, and so far, so good. Please let me know how it works for you. We're on track for a new master version hopefully soon.

Switched all my personal sites to the latest dev branch last week (after accidentally updating the server from PHP 8 to 8.1 — whoops...) and have had no issues — as far as I know — so far. Apart from a few minor ones (deprecation warnings) related to PHP 8.1, but those are already reported via GitHub.

I'd say that it seems pretty solid so far ?

[cb2004]

Same as @teppo, upgraded a lot of sites to the latest dev midweek and switched them to PHP 8.1. So far all good. 

[Tiberium]

14 hours ago, ryan said:

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a module I was working on for automatically saving front-end forms in progress. For the moment, it's it's called FormAutoSaver, but maybe I'll come up with a better name (or not). It emails the person filling out the form with one or two reminders with links to finish it if they leave it before submitting it. The emails are template-file based so fully under your control, and the delay in sending 1-2 reminders is also fully configurable, whether hours or days. [...], not just in getting people to finish their forms, but also in helping us to analyze where people tend to get stuck and stop filling out the form. It also comes with an admin tool that lets you browse the forms in progress and see where they are at. Whether you want to increase the completion rate of of any particular form(s), or you want to identify bottlenecks, I think you'll find tool helpful. You don't have to design your form for it, as it will work with any existing form. I expect to have this posted into the ProDevTools board as soon as next week. 

Hi Ryan,

as i read the first lines, i thought it would be a nice add-on for FormBuilder. Special in Combination with Page Break on larger Forms. Why it stick for you better in ProDevTools instead?

[wbmnfktr]

On 1/28/2022 at 9:13 PM, ryan said:

I've been successfully migrating some of the production sites that I work on to the dev branch, and so far, so good. Please let me know how it works for you. We're on track for a new master version hopefully soon.

All personal projects use the dev branch for quite some time now, even upcoming client projects use the dev branch it.
Besides 3.0.191 all have been super stable and reliable so far.

But still on PHP 7.4.

[ryan]

@Denis Schultz

Quote

as i read the first lines, i thought it would be a nice add-on for FormBuilder. Special in Combination with Page Break on larger Forms. Why it stick for you better in ProDevTools instead?

FormBuilder already has something like this feature in that it supports partial entries. But this FormAutoSaver does go quite a bit further in that it auto-saves as you type and it emails reminders to the user. FormBuilder auto-saves on paginations instead. Maybe it should be released in the FormBuilder board too. It's kind of a developer tool in that it takes a little code to implement into a form (while FormBuilder does not), so I was thinking ProDevTools was a good fit. But I'll either add a similar capability in FormBuilder or make this module available for FormBuilder users. For FormBuilder, I'll want to figure out how to make it an automatic option you can enable rather than one that you have to insert additional code for. 

 

[szabesz]

15 minutes ago, ryan said:

For FormBuilder, I'll want to figure out how to make it an automatic option you can enable rather than one that you have to insert additional code for. 

That would be great! Please also make it "FormBuilder friendly" becasue - just as you suggested – it makes perfect sense.