I enjoy hearing about unexpected ways in which people are using my applications. This is one of the best yet!
Both simpleContact Pro and Lite play nice with the popular blogging platform WordPress. They’re PHP/MySQL based so they can be hosted on the same website, even sharing a database. As a matter of fact they’re both installed on this website…
If you’ve installed WordPress you’ll find that the process with SCP is familiar (which is no coincidence). However, SCP is not a WordPress plugin. It’s a separate and self-contained application. This means that some people might prefer it to be more integrated with their blog that it currently is.
Enter Stephen Meehan of d3creative, a talented designer and personal friend of mine. He’s wrote a tutorial on his blog explaining how to add the simpleContact Pro contact form to a WordPress page template. It involves a bit of copying and pasting, but there’s nothing to intimidate someone who’s used to bending WordPress to their will.
Let me know what you think! I’m tempted to record a screencast video to describe this process…
Tags: wordpress
I am working with a company that is building a blog page using wordpress to support my business – myhomefilebox.com. That site is a sales tool – describing the features of the product – including the web-based applications – a calendar and a database. I’ve found a calendar that I believe I can integrate into the blog site – but I need a simple database which allow individual users to maintain a list of service contractors they have used and their satisfaction with them – their names and contact numbers, etc. Is this product a good candidate for that – and can this product then conglomerate all of the individual databases to form a “master resource list” for homeowners searchable by region/city.
It sounds like your requirements are outside the scope of simpleContact Pro. SCP is a custom contact form builder with built in mailing list opt-in.
If your website development isn’t too heavily invested in WordPress yet, it might be worth investigating other options. Expression Engine is a web publishing platform that can be used to build sites with complex database functionality (as well as more common components such as blogs and forums).
We have used it at the design agency I work for to build searchable information management systems for large clients.
Check out their features overview – at $249.99 for a commercial site license it’s not cheap but it’s powerful and well designed and undoubtedly cheaper than having a developer build the functionality you describe.