Last week I published a new npm package for Frontity so that you can use the form plugin Gravity Forms. Here are some thoughts on why we need the packages, and why I love to write them.
An important part of any business online is contact forms. It’s one of the main ways that people can reach out to you. When it comes to Frontity, it does not support sending forms out of the box, because there are so many form plugins for WordPress.
When I started to use Frontity, there was one package for CF7, but it did not work. At that time, I had little to no experience with JS and React. But I was making a website for a company that required a contact form, so I had to make it work. So I read a lot of documentation and got to work. I started with a fix in my project, that seemed to work, and I thought about leaving it there. But as I read in the community forum, more and more people posted about errors with the CF7 package. So I decided to publish my bug-fixed package on npm.
It’s been a few months since I published it, and I’m really happy that I did it. One of the reasons that I originally wasn’t going to publish the package was because I was new to JS and React, and because I was so new, I was afraid that I would make mistakes that could affect not just me, but other people if they decided yo use my package. So even though I had a working package, I was afraid of failure.
But at last, I decided to publish it, and so far it has worked out great. The feedback I have received from people so far has been good, and there have been no big problems that I haven’t been able to fix. Over the last few months, I have learned a lot more than I thought I would, because of the CF7 package. That’s why I also have published a new form package, this one for Gravity Forms. It supports the standard input and text area fields, and also single select and date fields. I have also updated the CF7 package to support the same.
Here are the links to the packages, and also the GitHub repos if you want to contribute with new features or bug fixes:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@aamodtgroup/frontity-contact-form-7
https://github.com/aamodtgroup/frontity-contact-form-7
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@aamodtgroup/frontity-gravity-forms
https://github.com/aamodtgroup/frontity-gravity-forms
Of course, much of the work I have done over the last few months would not have been possible without the great Frontity community, where I have asked many questions, and gotten a lot of great responses. And also the employees of Frontity, who have answered a lot of my questions, and pointed me in the right direction when needed. At the end of the day, that’s why I want to continue to learn and develop for Frontity, because of the community. I love being able to help others in their quest for a good website because, only a few months ago, I was the one that needed help to get going on my journey.