Shack Forms is a brilliant Joomla form extension. It is very user-friendly and flexible. With Shack Forms, you can instantly tweak your Joomla form design and behavior. You can do this even if you don't know a single thing about coding.
For example, you can instantly enhance your Joomla form fields using the pipe (|) symbol. In this blog post, I will show you 3 examples of using the pipe symbol in Shack Forms.
Here is what you can do in your Shack Form using the pipe symbol:
- You will be able to create a field as a group of radio buttons instead of one radio button.
- You will be able to create a field as a group of checkboxes instead of one checkbox.
- You will be able to create a field as a multiple select list instead of a single select field.
Let me show you an example of the practical application of each of these three options.
Let's assume your Joomla site is about pets. You would like a submitter of your Shack Form to indicate to you at least one of their favorite pet.
You would like to create a field for them to select their favorite pet or pets from the following options:
- Dogs
- Cats
- Parrots
- Fish
- Horses.
Example #1. Creating a field as a group of radio buttons
Creating a new field for your Joomla form with Shack Forms is a one-click task. You just click the "Add new field" button:
You enter, let's say, "Favorite Pet", into your new field "Field label" field:
Then you find the "Field type" field and click "Text":
You will see the drop-down list of your Shack Form field types. Here you need to click "Radio group":
Now you are ready to enjoy the magic of the pipe symbol in your Joomla form.
You find the "Values" field. You enter in it your list items, separated by the pipe (|) symbol. As we agreed earlier, for my demonstration, I entered "Dogs|Cats|Parrots|Fish|Horses":
To save your form, you would click "Save" or "Save & Close".
Now is a good time to check the form at the frontend of your site. You will see there that your form submitter can now see the "Favorite Pet" group of radio buttons and select their favorite pet:
Example #2. Creating a field as a group of checkboxes
With the pipe symbol, you can also create a field as a group of checkboxes.
This time, in the drop-down list of Shack Forms field types, you would click "Checkboxes group":
Then, just as in the example above, you go to the "Values" field. You enter in it your list of items, separated by the pipe (|) symbol:
You save your form and go to the frontend to check it. You will see that your form submitter can now select one or more of their favorite pets using one or more of the checkboxes:
Example #3. Creating a list field with multiple selectable options
Now take a look at how you would create a field with a drop-down list of miltiple selectable options.
Once again, you start by creating a new field in your Joomla form. You give it a label. Then you go to the "Field type" setting.
There, in the drop-down list of Shack Forms field types, you click "Multiple select list":
Now is a good time to apply the magic of the pipe symbol. You find the "Values" field. You enter in it your list of items, separated by the pipe (|) symbol:
You click "Save" or "Save & Close". You go to the frontend of your site to check the form. You will see that your form submitter can now select more than one pet with the "Ctrl" key:
What's Next?
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