Design It Up! (5)

Design It Up! is a feature which helps you learn handy little tricks to tweak up your blog. This week we are going to tackle Google Forms. These forms are very flexible and great to use for many different blog related events. They are very easy to set up, plus you can customize them in almost any way that you want. And with the concerns over personal privacy beginning to surface, this is a proactive step that a blogger can take to help ensure their readers information be kept private.

How to create a new form:

1. If you don't already have one, you must sign-up for a Google account. They are free, and only take a minute or two to create.

2. Once you are signed in, go to Google Documents either by visiting http://docs.google.com, or selecting "Documents" from the Google main page.

3. You will then select "Create New," then select "Form."


4. Next you will see the basic "Form." From here there are a few things you can do:

1.) Add questions
2.) Change the background. They have almost 70 different ones to choose from!
3.) Embed the form onto your site by copying and pasting the HTML code
4.) These are sample questions. You can either edit or delete them. I usually just delete them to start with a black form.
5.) At the bottom, there is direct link that you can also use to link to the form.


5. Once you have the form and questions set up how you like, just hit save and you are done! All that is left is to decide how you would like to implement the form on your site, and plug it in.

Now, if you are like me, and want to know when people submit a form, there is a nice feature that Google has where it can email you. To set this up, go back to your main Google Documents page, and select the form which you would like to get notifications for. Go to "Tools"- "Notification Rules...". From here you can select what kinds of emails you get, and how many.

And that is it! Enjoy!

Got any blogger designing questions you want addressed? Leave a comment or email me at neverendingshelf(at)gmail.com.