I am looking for a form that works within Totalcms that ensures people are entering uniform data on their own pages in certain fields. does such a form stack exist?
So that I can understand a bit better…what do you mean by “uniform data”. Are you wishing to have form fields that validate data is being entered a certain way? For instance what sort of formatted entry is allowed for a phone number etc.
Well I would prefer that when entering data on a totalcms page validated data such as a phone number must be a phone number but I would settle for a form that says ’enter your phone number’ and the the field entries would appear on the public facing pages as a their phone number. I have a number of people adding data to their own pages but I want to enforce certain fields on the page.
Sorry I still don’t get it. As I read your follow up I’m not sure where you’re running into trouble with total cms? If I read correctly (which I often do not) that’s exactly what total cms does. One makes an admin page with fields for entry and that data is displayed on the public facing page however one formats the public facing data field. Again sorry if I’m missing it…perhaps a live example with a scenario would help?
For clarity are we talking about a form that one submits or the admin side of total cms?
Sorry I am not making myself clear. The site I am making for my client has a large number of practitioners. They can using TotalCMS each edit and maintain their own page and profile. However on their pages I want a consistent contact form that shows the email, telephone etc. I want it such that in the email line for example it checks that an email address has been entered, for telephone a valid number, not just any old text they fancy putting in there. Does this make it clearer? Thanks
Thanks Dave that helps and your question makes complete sense. So there are many ways to go about this (perhaps others will chime in with their experience?). I’m not sure what tools you have in addition to totalcms (which I love by the way), but Joe Workman’s Foundation framework has this ability with it’s Form stack. Yabdab has Formsnap and Formloom (free trials available). IMO Formloom would be best for you in this situation. While I don’t have the stack it appears to have very robust validation rule abilities. Further many on this forum praise machforms (an online webform builder). Machforms has this ability as well. So in short plenty of options out there (their are more as well). In my quick looking Formloom might be the way to go? @yabdab makes good stacks IMO. I’ve tagged them here if they wish to chime in.
Formloom is a plug-in, so couldn’t be used on the same page as TCMS stacks. Formsnap is a stack, so would be a better option to use on a TCMS page.
There is also FormsPlus from Chillidog, Superforms from 1LD, and advice said before both Foundation 1 and 6 have inbuilt form stacks.
That’s great thanks to all very much for the information.
Sorry, but I am must be being a bit thick here, I have FormPlus so that would be my preference (although I do have F6 as well). The bit I don’t get is that I cannot assign a TCMS id to the input. So one of the practitioners logs in to their webpage (which is a TCMS admin page) to update their profile, the form presents itself and they complete it.
When Joe public go to the public facing version of this page how do I show what was entered in the form on the TCMS admin page?
If I understand, and I think I do, that’s not how Tcms works. You can’t update (out of the box) Tcms data on an admin page with a third party form. Tcms data must be added via the Tcms admin stacks.
Thanks Paul 
Ok thanks, it seems I cannot do what I want, I will have find another way. Many thanks all, your help is most appreciated.
Ok now I think I get it 
so it sounds to me that the form you mention really isn’t a true webform (one that a user fills out and is submitted to an email address or database) as I was envisioning. It sounds to me that we’re talking about text fields you create on the admin side of tcms and you then wish to validate the data entered so that when those entries are displayed on the public facing side it is formatted a certain way. So ignore my Formloom etc advice earlier
As I understand it tcms has some limited validation using the “Numbers” stack. However tcms does play well with some other stacks from Joe and others. I’ve tagged @joeworkman to see if he has any input on how another of his stacks may assist. That said, in my opinion and experience one can get a reasonable amount of control over scenarios like this by concatenating (i.e. joining) fields and text.
For instance lets say you want to ensure a phone number always appears in this format 1+ (xxx) xxx-xxxx. So a phone number on the admin side would be comprised of three separate tcms number fields. First Field = id “areacode”, second field = id “firstthree”, third field = id “lastfour”. One can then join those fields with other bits of texts or characters to display how they wish on the public side using the tcms macros. In this case:
“1+ (%cmsData(areacode)% %cmsData(firstthree)% - %cmsData(lastfour)%”
*note - off the top of my head I can’t recall what the correct tcms macro is for the number field. I think it’s data?
I suspect their is another better/more robust way to handle this. But this is a method I’ve used in the past.
What are the specific fields that are causing an issue? That is which fields are your end users failing to maintain formatting and or desired entries. Email, Phone, … others?
Additionally the select value (forget exact name) stack in tcms comes in handy in that one can enter allowable entries and the end user can select from those. Works great for certain scenarios.
Yes you understand exactly what i am after.
So the field’s I want are (for example)
My website…
My email…
My phone…
Where I teach…
When I teach…
So these fields are completed on the TCMS admin page and displayed on the public facing TCMS page…
Again many thanks.
Not sure if the specifics…but the where I teach and when I teach might be a good candidate for a select value field in the admin side. For instance if there are 15 locations one could generate a list of those values for your end users to select. I have a project file that I’ll share via a message that demonstrates how I handled a set of sites across several locations with similar needs.
That would be great, thank you.
Total CMS does not have any form validation. You can supply templated data for things like the blog form. This way people can have a template to start from when creating a post.
I may consider it for CMS 2 but it won’t be high on the priority list. If someone has a typo in their phone number, then fix it and save it again. I don’t see a huge usability win here. I do see that the idea does have warrant though.
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