CUNY Academic Commons

If in order to run correctly CForms requires permission to create php files in that directory, then I think we need to uninstall CForms.

I think the Contact Form 7 plugin works, though I haven't used it much. I have hard good things about http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/formidable/screenshots/, though again I haven't used it. If you're gung ho on Gravity Forms, go ahead and buy it and open a ticket for me to install it.

Thanks, Boone. I haven't used Gravity Forms or Formidable Forms. Chris, since you've used GF, would you mind giving FF a whirl and letting me know what you think of the difference in functionality?

Thanks. I will check out Formidable Forms.

Matt,

I'm taking a quick look at Boone's 1.4.10 issues to see if I can help out. This issue seems a little old. Do we know if Chris (Caruso) still needs this functionality? What is the current status of the ARC advertising campaign mentioned in the original description?

Basically, is there something I can do with this ticket to move it forward?

Hi Dominic,

The ARC Fellowships didn't use a web-based form for our application process this year, but we would like to for next year. Here's how it was handled this year: http://research.commons.gc.cuny.edu/arc-distinguished-fellowship-program/

However, we would prefer to go with Gravity Forms if that is a possibility. We could probably tap ARC's budget for this if costs are a factor.

Thanks for checking in,

Chris

Thanks Chris.

Boone,

You raised the concern above that if CForms needs special permissions then we should remove it. There are currently 9 blogs using CForms:

An Artem Altman Blog
Gslis720 Digital
gslis790.3 digital
Graduate Student Organization at Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing (GSO@HBSON)
Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing Alumni Association
Podcasting and Pedagogy
Advanced Research Collaborative
Remix in Tech & Teaching

Of those 9 blogs only one (Advanced Research Collaborative) is not also using Contact Form 7. I've never used CForms but I have used Contact Form 7. It seems to me that we could effect a zero-sum plugin gain in this situation. We can remove CForms becuase it's being duplicated, and add Gravity Forms which I believe is now a valid request. As Chris says above:

we would prefer to go with Gravity Forms if that is a possibility

Let me know what you think.

Thanks for researching this, Dom.

Simply looking at which blogs have activated CForms is only the beginning. What really matters is how many are actually using CForms forms in practice. The fact that nearly all of these blogs has also activated CF7 makes me think that a good number of them are not using CForms. But it could be that some of them are, in fact, actively using CForms, in which case we can't simply remove it.

We have a couple of options:
1) Do nothing. Leave CForms.
2) Keep CForms installed, but do something to prevent it from being installed by anyone else on the Commons. (Adding Ray as a watcher, as he can let us know how hard that'd be - Commons In A Box has the code we need for the purpose.)
3) Verify which blogs are actually using CForms, and help them to migrate to a different plugin. To verify, we can either (a) reach out to the admins of the blogs to ask whether they're using it, or (b) use our super admin privileges to see whether they are actively using it.

The ideal situation is probably (3) (which is what Dom is suggesting here), but this will take a lot of work. I have a feeling that (2) is going to be far easier, and is probably good enough for our purposes. Thoughts?

It's only 9 blogs. I don't mind trying 3b. Even if only half are actively using CForms for their contact forms I don't think it will be difficult to help those folks over to CF7.

Plus, there isn't a huge rush here. Chris says he doesn't need Gravity Forms until next years app process. So we can take our time and get rid of CForms properly.

2) Keep CForms installed, but do something to prevent it from being installed by anyone else on the Commons. (Adding Ray as a watcher, as he can let us know how hard that'd be - Commons In A Box has the code we need for the purpose.)

So we want to omit CForms from being seen in the plugins list, but leave it installed for those that already have it installed?

If we want to go with this approach, should be quite simple by filtering 'all_plugins' and unsetting the CForms file loader from the plugins list.

Hi All --

Just FYI, I'm going to purchase Gravity Forms in the next week or so and hope to have it ready to add to the site by the next update on the 21. If not then, then we'll have it by the 1st.

Boone,

Thanks to what I've learned from both you and Ray about the plugin api, here's what I was able to come up with:

/**
 * Prevent cforms from being installed by anyone else on the Commons.
 */
function cac_hide_cforms( $plugins ) {
    if ( array_key_exists( 'cforms/cforms.php', $plugins ) )
        unset( $plugins['cforms/cforms.php']);

    return $plugins;
}
add_filter( 'all_plugins', 'cac_hide_cforms' );

I've added it to the bottom of mu-plugins/cac-functions.php. Let me know if this looks good and I'll commit and close this issue.

Should I open another issue to move forward with removing cforms completely? Or should we just stay with this solution?