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Forminator Crosses 500K+ Installs and Reaches Top-Five Free Form Plugin Status 📈

With over 500,000 downloads, Forminator has quickly evolved into a powerful plugin, beloved for its user-friendly design, extensive features, and robust integrations.

Forminator Downloads
Forminator’s journey from zero to form hero … 500K+ downloads and counting!

How do you grow a plugin from zero to hero and make it shine in a market saturated with plugins? Read on to find out…

Since its inception, Forminator has been consistently evolving, introducing new features and integrations that have significantly enhanced its functionality and user base.

In this article, we take a look at how Forminator became the go-to custom form solution more web developers are choosing to add interactive contact forms, payment forms, polls, quizzes, and more to WordPress sites.

Forminator
Forminator started out as a nerdy superhero before becoming a fully white labeled plugin!

We’ll cover the following sections:

Forminator’s Journey

Forminator began its journey on 17th May 2017, marking the commencement of a project that would significantly impact WordPress form building.

The first Forminator version was released on 20 February 2018 and launched to the world on September 12, 2018.

Here’s a look at the plugin’s journey and key moments:

Releases

2019 Enhancements

Continued Growth in 2020

Expanding the Ecosystem

Recent Developments

Milestones

  • October 2018: Surpassed 4,000 active installations.
  • January 2019: Reached 10k active installations.
  • June 2019: Achieved 20k active installations.
  • July 2020: Crossed 60k active installations.
  • August 2021: Exceeded 200k active installations.
  • February 2023: Surpassed 400k installations.
  • January 2024: Reached a landmark of 500k installations.

The above timeline not only highlights the continuous improvements and enhancements made to Forminator but also showcases the growing trust and reliance of the WordPress community on this versatile plugin.

What Users Like Most About Forminator

“Forminator Pro has been life-changing.”

Jamie J. WPMU DEV Member

So, what makes Forminator so popular?

According to our users, here’s what many like best about Forminator:

1. Comprehensive Free Features

Forminator offers a vast array of functionalities without the need for a Pro upgrade. Users can create custom forms, polls, quizzes, and payment forms at no cost that support integrations with PayPal and Stripe for financial transactions, making the plugin an all-encompassing solution for gathering information, engaging users, and facilitating payments.

2. User-Friendly Design

Forminator boasts a drag-and-drop visual builder that simplifies the process of form creation and customization. The plugin’s accessibility features and intuitive interface cater to both beginners and advanced users, ensuring that adding forms to a WordPress site is simple, easy, and very straightforward.

3. Responsive Support Team

WordPress users rave about our award-winning customer support, which is highly responsive and helpful, and extends not only to all of our products and services, including Forminator, but also anything WordPress-related.

Also, as a Stripe Verified Partner, Forminator benefits from a direct line to additional resources and support. This partnership highlights our plugin’s commitment to provide a reliable service and ensure that users can maximize the functionality of their Stripe integration.

4. Wide-Ranging Integration

Forminator offers seamless compatibility with a plethora of third-party services, including email marketing tools, CRM systems, and project management platforms.

Integration with over a dozen services like HubSpot, Mailchimp, Google Sheets, Slack, Trello, and newer additions like Mailjet (plus over 1000 apps when using Forminator’s Webhooks integration) ensures seamless workflows and enhanced productivity.

Additionally, Forminator’s full-featured API enables connections with a wide range of services and automation tools, enhancing its utility and flexibility.

5. Deep Customization

Beyond basic form creation, Forminator allows for deep customization through a variety of drag-and-drop blocks and field types. Users can tailor forms to their specific needs, whether for GDPR compliance, social media quizzes, or customer feedback.

6. Advanced Functionalities

For users requiring more sophisticated capabilities, Forminator offers advanced features such as e-signature collection, subscription and recurring payments on Stripe, custom login/registration forms, multi-step forms, file uploads, and integrations with many applications and platforms.

These functionalities, available with Forminator Pro, extend the plugin’s utility to virtually any scenario.

Forminator’s Challenges

Forminator’s popularity continues to grow despite having faced challenges and hurdles since launching, such as:

Standing Out in a Crowded Market

The WordPress plugin ecosystem is highly competitive. With almost 60,000 free WordPress plugins listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory and thousands more premium and custom plugins available to extend and enhance the functionality of WordPress sites, it’s tough for any plugin to stand out.

Forminator has continually addressed this challenge by developing unique features and making these freely available where most would charge for them, consistently delivering exceptional, award-winning support to users, and always being willing to actively engage with its user community.

User Feedback and Feature Requests

They say that you can’t please everybody, but we try our darndest to do this.

Handling the diverse needs of our users has required the implementation of multiple feedback systems to prioritize plugin improvements.

We encourage user feedback and feature requests not only for Forminator, but for all areas of our platform, and we do this by actively engaging our user community through our support channels, member’s forums, holding Discussions of The Week (DOTW), running user surveys, and more.

User Interface Usability

Trying to achieve a balance of providing advanced features while remaining easy to use has led to extensive and continuous UX/UI testing and refinements of Forminator’s interface and feature usability by our development team.

For example, to view just how much work has gone into improving the Free version of Forminator alone, check out the plugin’s extensive and fully documented development log on WordPress.org.

As part of our focus and commitment to continually improve Forminator’s user experience and user interface for WordPress users of all skill levels, we provide in-depth and updated plugin documentation, practical tutorials and guides, and an AI-powered knowledgebase.

The Secret To Forminator’s Success

While we’re really pleased with Forminator’s growth to date, achieving success amidst a saturated WordPress plugin market has been no small feat.

Developing Forminator from an idea into one of the “Top 5” form plugins for WordPress is an ongoing effort requiring not only the daily cooperation between all members of our team and feedback from our valued users, but also a comprehensive approach that involves:

  • Performing diligent market analysis to understand the current landscape and identify gaps, trends, and opportunities,
  • Conducting in-depth research of our existing user base to understand their needs, preferences, and pain points,
  • Implementing robust and meticulous tracking of user behavior to understand user interactions with the plugin and which features are being most utilized or neglected.
  • Gathering insights from our analysis, support, and product development teams to prioritize and develop new features and innovative functionalities that will exceed our users’ expectations and deliver greater value than our competitors,
  • Continuously iterating and enhancing the plugin, leveraging user feedback and data-driven decisions.

And finally, and very importantly …

Bundling all of the above into one very robust, professional, and well-supported plugin and then giving it to the WordPress community for FREE!

Forminator plugin banner on WordPress,org
Download Forminator for Free at WordPress.org

Forminator: Looking To The Future

As Forminator’s popularity and usage increases, our plugin development team remains hard at work and committed to achieve the following aims:

Introduce New Free Features

Innovation and user feedback drive the addition of new functionalities. To keep track of new developments and view Forminator’s upcoming features, visit our Roadmap.

Pursue Community-Driven Development

As our entire platform is geared toward helping WordPress web developers and digital agencies grow their business, we value our users’ insights and their experiences, and this significantly influences our development roadmap.

Enhance Integrations

As new technologies and applications emerge, we will continue to expand Forminator’s integrations with key services and platforms to offer more versatility to our users.

Focus on Performance and Reliability

Our plugin development team regularly reviews and optimizes all aspects of Forminator to ensure that as new features and functionalities get added, the plugin will continue to remain fast, reliable, and efficient, whether users choose to download and use the free or Pro version.

Have You Discovered the Power of Forminator Yet?

Forminator’s journey from its initial release to surpassing 500,000 downloads is a testament to WPMU DEV’s commitment to innovation, user satisfaction, and adaptability.

With a focus on user-friendly design and versatility, comprehensive features, and robust integrations, Forminator’s broad feature set and ease of use make it a standout choice for all WordPress users looking to enhance their site’s interactivity, collect payments, and more, all while maintaining a user-friendly and accessible interface.

The future looks promising for Forminator, with plans for new features catering to a wide range of needs, enhanced integrations, and a dedication to performance and reliability.

If you are a current Forminator user, we thank you for helping us reach the 500k download milestone. We truly value your feedback and input into helping us to continually improve the plugin’s features and ease of use.

If you haven’t experienced the power and simplicity of Forminator yet, we invite you to make it a staple in your web development or digital agency’s toolkit. Download Forminator for free or become a WPMU DEV member today and experience Forminator Pro risk-free for 30 days.

We look forward to celebrating 1 million downloads of Forminator with you in the very near future.

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Empower Software Development With Data Analytics: Enhance Efficiency, Quality, and User Satisfaction

Data Analytics in Software Development

In the realm of software development, the application of data analytics tools transcends mere operational enhancements, embedding itself as a pivotal component in the engineering and management processes. This integration is propelled by an understanding that data, when effectively analyzed and applied, can significantly augment the efficiency, reliability, and overall success of software projects.

Data analytics tools serve a multifaceted role in software development and not only facilitate a detailed assessment of project metrics and performance indicators but enable developers to gain insights into code quality, user engagement, and system operations. The strategic incorporation of these tools into the software development lifecycle (SDLC) empowers teams to navigate complex project landscapes with data-driven confidence.

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Revolutionizing Real-Time Alerts With AI, NATS, and Streamlit

Imagine you have an AI-powered personal alerting chat assistant that interacts using up-to-date data. Whether it’s a big move in the stock market that affects your investments, any significant change on your shared SharePoint documents, or discounts on Amazon you were waiting for, the application is designed to keep you informed and alert you about any significant changes based on the criteria you set in advance using your natural language.

In this post, we will learn how to build a full-stack event-driven weather alert chat application in Python using pretty cool tools: Streamlit, NATS, and OpenAI. The app can collect real-time weather information, understand your criteria for alerts using AI, and deliver these alerts to the user interface.

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Insights From AWS Re:Invent 2023

AWS re:Invent is an annual conference hosted by Amazon Web Services. AWS re:Invent 2023 stood out as a beacon of innovation, education, and vision in cloud computing. Held in Las Vegas, Nevada, spread over five days, the conference was one of the largest gatherings in the cloud sector, attracting an estimated 65,000+ attendees from around the globe. Having had the privilege to attend this year (2023), I am excited to share the key takeaways from the conference and interactions with some of the brightest minds in cloud computing. I aim to inspire and shed light on the expansive possibilities cloud technology offers.

AWS Aurora Limitless Database

In today’s world, enterprise applications typically rely on backend databases to host all the data necessary for the application. As you add new capabilities to your application or there is a growth in the customer base on your application, the volume of data hosted by the database surges rapidly, and the number of transactions that require database interaction increases significantly.

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Mastering Spring: Synchronizing @Transactional and @Async Annotations With Various Propagation Strategies

The Spring Framework stands as a comprehensive solution for developing Java applications, offering a plethora of features for streamlined development. Within its suite of functionalities, managing transactions and executing operations asynchronously is particularly crucial. They play significant roles in maintaining the consistency of data and enhancing application scalability and responsiveness, respectively. This article seeks to shed light on the synergistic use of Spring's @Transactional and @Async annotations, providing insights into their collective application to optimize the performance of Java applications. 

Understanding Transaction Management in Spring

Transaction management is crucial in any enterprise application to ensure data consistency and integrity. In Spring, this is achieved through the @Transactional annotation, which abstracts the underlying transaction management mechanism, making it easier for developers to control transaction boundaries declaratively.

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Is digital marketing effective for your business?

  • Digital marketing uses electronic devices and the internet for marketing efforts.
  • It includes channels like search engines, social media, email, and websites.
  • Businesses use digital marketing to connect with current and potential customers.
  • Strategies include creating and sharing valuable content, advertising, and engaging with audiences.
  • The goal is to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, and generate leads or sales.
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Top 10 Frontend Frameworks of 2024 for Web Development

In the fast-paced world of web development, staying abreast of the latest front-end frameworks is crucial for creating robust and efficient web applications. Frontend frameworks play a pivotal role in achieving this, offering developers the tools and structure needed to create responsive, interactive, and visually appealing web applications. As we step into 2024, the landscape of front-end development is dynamic and diverse. Developers have an array of tools at their disposal to enhance productivity and build cutting-edge user interfaces. In this article, we'll explore the top 10 front-end frameworks of 2024, each offering unique features and advantages.

Top 10 Frontend Frameworks for Web Development

1. ReactJS

ReactJS will continue to dominate the front-end development scene in 2024. Developed and maintained by Facebook, React is widely recognized for its component-based architecture, allowing developers to create reusable UI elements. React's virtual DOM ensures optimal performance, and its one-way data binding simplifies state management. With a vast community and a plethora of libraries, React remains a top choice for building interactive and scalable user interfaces.

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Building for the Metaverse: Essential Tools and Frameworks for Developers

The Metaverse is a new concept that is emerging in the digital realm. Once confined to the realms of science fiction and speculative imagination, it is now becoming a tangible reality. Thanks to the ingenuity of developers and the advancement of technology, the Metaverse is defined as a collective virtual shared space. It transcends traditional boundaries and offers limitless possibilities for exploration, interaction, and creativity.

As the Metaverse continues to evolve, developers find themselves at the forefront of this digital revolution, tasked with shaping its landscape and defining its potential. Armed with a diverse array of tools and frameworks, developers are pioneering the creation of immersive virtual experiences that blur the lines between reality and imagination.

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Vector Database for LLMs, Generative AI, and Deep Learning

Understanding Vector Databases

A vector database is a type of database specifically designed to store and manage vector data using arbitrary but related coordinates to related data. Unlike traditional databases that handle scalar data (like numbers, strings, or dates), vector databases are optimized for high-dimensional data points. But first, we have to talk about vector embeddings.

Vector embeddings are a method used in natural language processing (NLP) to represent words as vectors in a lower-dimensional space. This technique simplifies complex data for processing by models like Word2Vec, GloVe, or BERT. These real-world embeddings are highly complex, often with hundreds of dimensions, capturing nuanced attributes of words.

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AWS vs. Azure: Which Is Better for Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing first came to light during the mid-2000s, with providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) taking charge. Over the years, Cloud computing has been gaining popularity and has seen exponential growth and adaptability in the last decade. In fact, the global cloud infrastructure spending reached US$247.1 Billion in 2022 and is expected to grow further by 23% in 2023.

Today, there are several service providers in the Cloud computing space with a variety of offerings such as pocket-friendly costs, easy setup options, and state-of-the-art security. As a result, more and more companies are migrating their infrastructure to Cloud platforms to take advantage of various business benefits associated with their adoption.

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MLOps vs. DevOps: The Key Similarities and Differences

DevOps has been an integral part of software development for the last 15 years. The ‘shift left’ culture, as it is popularly known, is employed across various organizations as it introduced new technologies, automation, and people systems to help shorten the software development lifecycle and provide continuous delivery of high-quality software.

With the rise of Artificial Intelligence in recent years, the structure of how enterprises are delivering and consuming AI has changed drastically with the proliferation of open-source technology. MLOps is the logical reaction to the current difficulties enterprises face putting machine learning into production.

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Decoding Large Language Models and How They Work

The evolution of natural language processing with Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and GPT-4 marks a significant milestone, with these models demonstrating near-human comprehension in text-based tasks. Moving beyond this, OpenAI's introduction of Large Multimodal Models (LMMs) represents a notable shift, enabling these models to process both images and textual data. This article will focus on the core text interpretation techniques of LLMs — tokenization and embedding — and their adaptation in multimodal contexts, signaling an AI future that transcends text to encompass a broader range of sensory inputs.

Turning raw text into a format that Large Language Models like GPT-4 can understand involves a series of complex and connected steps. Each of these processes — tokenization, token embeddings, and the use of transformer architecture — plays a critical role in how these models understand and generate human language.

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How To Integrate NCache With JPA Hibernate for Caching in Spring Boot Applications

What Is JPA Hibernate?

Hibernate is one of the most popular Object Relational Mapper (ORM) libraries for Java and Spring applications. It helps developers connect to and work with relational databases from Java applications without having to write SQL queries. The library implements the JPA (Java Persistence API) specification and provides several additional features that help develop persistence in applications faster and easier.

Caching in JPA Hibernate

One of the cool features supported by Hibernate is caching. Hibernate supports two levels of caching — L1 and L2. L1 cache is enabled by default and works within an application scope, so it cannot be shared across multiple threads. For example, if you have a scaled microservice application that reads and writes to a table in a relational database setup, this L1 cache is maintained individually within each of these containers where the microservice is running.

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Data Mesh: A Paradigm Shift in Data Management

In this article, I’m going to share my thoughts about data mesh, a concept I came across a few years back. It was first introduced in 2018 at a conference called "Building Scalable and Reliable Data Products" by Zhamak Dehghani. The concept is based on Domain Driven Design from the Book “Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software” by Eric Evans. 

Data mesh is a new technology that could provide a framework for managing distributed data ecosystems more effectively by treating data as a product and empowering teams to take ownership of their data while also enabling effective communication to interconnect distributed data residing in different locations. By effective communication, I meant building a solid linkage between the data domains for proper data availability. 

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AI and Microservice Architecture, A Perfect Match?

In the realm of modern software development and IT infrastructure, the amalgamation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Microservice Architecture has sparked a revolution, promising a new era of scalability, flexibility, and efficiency. This blog delves into the synergistic relationship between AI and microservices, exploring whether they indeed constitute a perfect match for businesses and developers looking to harness the full potential of both worlds.

The Rise of Microservices

Microservice architecture, characterized by its design principle of breaking down applications into smaller, independently deployable services, has gained immense popularity for its ability to enhance scalability, facilitate continuous deployment, and improve fault isolation. Unlike monolithic architectures, microservices allow teams to deploy updates for specific functions without affecting the entire system, making it an ideal approach for dynamic and evolving applications.

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‘Top’ Reporting Accurate Metrics Within Containers

“Top” is a robust, lightweight command-line tool that provides real-time reports on system-wide resource utilization. It is commonly available in various Linux distributions. However, we have observed that it may not accurately report information when executed within a Docker container. This post aims to bring this issue to your attention.

CPU Stress Test in Docker Container

Let’s carry out a straightforward experiment. We’ll deploy a container using an Ubuntu image and intentionally increase CPU consumption. Execute the following command:

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Disaster Recovery and High Availability Solutions in SQL Server

When managing a database, ensuring data availability and integrity is paramount, especially in the face of hardware failures, software bugs, or natural disasters. SQL Server offers a suite of features designed to provide high availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions. This article delves into the technical aspects of SQL Server's HA and DR options. These include always-on availability groups, database mirroring, log shipping, and replication. We'll also cover strategies for implementing a disaster recovery plan through a simulation/example.

Always-On Availability Groups

Always-on availability groups (henceforth referred to as AGs in this article) in SQL Server mark a significant advancement in database technology, enhancing the landscape of high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and read-scale capabilities beyond what was previously achievable with database mirroring. Introduced in SQL Server 2012, AGs offer a sophisticated, scalable solution designed to ensure continuous data availability and system resilience across a range of scenarios.

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A Practical Guide To Designing For Colorblind People

Too often, accessibility is seen as a checklist, but it’s much more complex than that. We might be using a good contrast for our colors, but then, if these colors are perceived very differently by people, it can make interfaces extremely difficult to use.

Depending on our color combinations, people with color weakness or who are colorblind won’t be able to tell them apart. Here are key points for designing with colorbliness — for better and more reliable color choices.

This article is part of our ongoing series on design patterns. It’s also a part of the video library on Smart Interface Design Patterns 🍣 and is available in the live UX training as well.

Colorweakness and Colorblindness

It’s worth stating that, like any other disability, colorblind users are on the spectrum, as Bela Gaytán rightfully noted. Each experience is unique, and different people perceive colors differently. The grades of colorblindness vary significantly, so there is no consistent condition that would be the same for everyone.

When we speak about colors, we should distinguish between two different conditions that people might have. Some people experience deficiencies in “translating” light waves into red-ish, green-ish or blue-ish colors. If one of these translations is not working properly, a person is at least colorweak. If the translation doesn’t work at all, a person is colorblind.

Depending on the color combinations we use, people with color weakness or people who are colorblind won’t be able to tell them apart. The most common use case is a red-/green deficiency, which affects 8% of European men and 0.5% of European women.

Note: the insights above come from “How Your Colorblind And Colorweak Readers See Your Colors,” a wonderful three-part series by Lisa Charlotte Muth on how colorblind and color weak readers perceive colors, things to consider when visualizing data and what it’s like to be colorblind.

Design Guidelines For Colorblindness

As Gareth Robins has kindly noted, the safe option is to either give people a colorblind toggle with shapes or use a friendly ubiquitous palette like viridis. Of course, we should never ever ask a colorblind person, “What color is this?” as they can’t correctly answer that question.

✅ Red-/green deficiencies are more common in men.
✅ Use blue if you want users to perceive color as you do.
✅ Use any 2 colors as long as they vary by lightness.
✅ Colorblind users can tell red and green apart.
✅ Colorblind users can’t tell dark green and brown apart.
✅ Colorblind users can’t tell red and brown apart.
✅ The safest color palette is to mix blue with orange or red.

🚫 Don’t mix red, green and brown together.
🚫 Don’t mix pink, turquoise and grey together.
🚫 Don’t mix purple and blue together.
🚫 Don’t use green and pink if you use red and blue.
🚫 Don’t mix green with orange, red, or blue of the same lightness.

Never Rely On Colors Alone

It’s worth noting that the safest bet is to never rely on colors alone to communicate data. Use labels, icons, shapes, rectangles, triangles, and stars to indicate differences and show relationships. Be careful when combining hues and patterns: patterns change how bright or dark colors will be perceived.

Who Can Use? is a fantastic little tool to quickly see how a color palette affects different people with visual impairments — from reduced sensitivity to red, to red/green blindness to cataracts, glaucoma, low vision and even situational events such as direct sunlight and night shift mode.

Use lightness to build gradients, not just hue. Use different lightnesses in your gradients and color palettes so readers with a color vision deficiency will still be able to distinguish your colors. And most importantly, always include colorweak and colorblind people in usability testing.

Useful Resources on Colorblindness

Useful Colorblindness Tools

Meet Smart Interface Design Patterns

If you are interested in similar insights around UX, take a look at Smart Interface Design Patterns, our 10h-video course with 100s of practical examples from real-life projects — with a live UX training starting March 7. Everything from mega-dropdowns to complex enterprise tables — with 5 new segments added every year. Jump to a free preview.

Meet Smart Interface Design Patterns, our video course on interface design & UX.

100 design patterns & real-life examples.
10h-video course + live UX training. Free preview.