Multi step forms from A-Z using Spry Tab Panels

I must suffer from some form of learning disorder. In Aikido, Kung Fu and Karate, there is a step by step process from step A-Z for the beginner. I am a beginner. Until I can master the basic steps...I do not have an understanding of the creativity that can take place once I do master the basics.

I am working on my site at www.USboi.com. The test page is at

test.php

The concept that I am trying to adhere to with "Forms" is to present to the user three forms. A quick Contact form, A short form and a Long form. I have inserted a spry tab panel div?

I would like to create a simple appointment form for the quick form with the basic contact information, such as it present in your pre-configured appointment form template in form builder. Then,

a brief. 20 question, or so multi step form for the Short form, (it would be nice to have the form show or hide questions depending on the responses. For example, "Have you had any claims in the last five years? " if the response is yes, then another questions appears with a questions such as... "How many?" The respond...say the answer is "3". Then based upon that response three instances of more questions asking for a type of loss (drop down list) date of loss, amount of loss, open or closed and an optional brief explaination. (this would be kick...in it if I could learn how to do this)


and a Long form that may have 60 or more questions depending on how they answer the questions. (similary to the short form, I have more questions depending on how they answer the qustions along the way).

What are the first, tiniest steps to take to learn? For example:

Step one: form builder tutorial,
Step two: Cookies?
Step three: Security assist?
Step four: ????

Also, the site is expected to have more than 4000 types of forms for various lines of insurance that I provide.

Thank you for your mastery of these skills and for the sharing of your wisdom.

SValencia

I would definitely start by trying to build your knowledge with CSS Form Builder first. Since you have many forms to produce this will be a main tool that you will use in creating or modifying all of these forms. Being able to save forms as presets will save a bit of time and allow you to use a preset as a starting point for a new form rather than build it all from scratch.

You should start with the Getting Started Guide for Form Builder. Here is a link to the support page:

css-form-builder/

Once you have learned about using Form Builder I think the next part you should look into will be the conditional questions in the forms. This can be done using client side validation but it will require you to be familiar with the steps needed to apply client validations and there responses. The best place to get info on this is within the help for Form Builder and on the support page for Validation Toolkit:

validation-toolkit/

You should start with the getting started guide. To store the information along the way it might be best to make use of Cookies Toolkit, it has the ability to store an entire form in a cookie and repopulate the form from that cookie. Here is a link to the page for this:

cookies-toolkit/

Finally, if you would like to add Security to your site you could make use of Security Assist. The wizard will produce a set of pages for users to register, update and login. You can create access rules for allowing access to given pages within the site. Here is a link to the support page for Security Assist:

securityassist/

It can be difficult to provide an A-Z set of steps to achieve a particular goal since the goal will be different for most people and even when the goal is the same it may be desired to have the goal achieved in a particular way. Also, most of what you would like to create and add is not interdependent. For example, the only parts that must go in order are dictated by the nature of the desired result. You cannot apply conditional validation to a form that does not exist, the same goes for setting cookie values to form values, the form must exist first. For the other parts though, like creating your spry tabs or applying security to the pages do not have to be done in any particular order. I hope I have explained things well enough, please post back with any questions that you have.