The one feature that WordPress doesn’t provide that many businesses request is a contact form. There’s many plugins out there (I used to use cforms2), but for something as simple as this you don’t need to use a plugin.

1. Open up Google Docs and click New > Form.
2. Fill out all the questions you want. A typical contact form might just include Name, Email, Message.
3. Go back to the spreadsheet and click Share > Set Notification Rules. Check “email me when someone submits a form” and “email me right away”
4. (Option 1) If you like Google’s default form design, click “Embed” and copy the code it provides (an iframe).
5. (Option 2) If you would like to customize the design of the form, go to the spreadsheet and click  Form > View Live Form. Right click on the page, press “View Source,” and copy the code: <form> … </form>.
6. (Simple option). Go to WordPress, edit your Contact Page, switch to HTML view and paste the code. This will add the form to your page.
7. (More difficult option) If you’re a developer and don’t want clients messing with the form’s code, create a page template, include the code in there, and then set the contact page to that page template.
8. If you chose Option 2 above, you can now use CSS to style the form to match your site.

Here’s an example of the form in action: http://2010.bilconference.com I just used the iframe because I didn’t need to change the look of the form.

Additional feature – If you’d like to share the responses on your site (like the BIL Attendees page), just:

1. Create a new sheet on the spreadsheet (at the bottom, “Add Sheet”).
2. Label the columns you’d like to include at the top.
3. Under the first column, type “=” then switch to the previous sheet and select the first column’s contents. Press Enter. This should give you a formula the duplicates the content (something like =Sheet1!A2). Repeat for each column you’d like to share.
4. Select all the cells of the first row of data, hover over the bottom right corner, click the square and drag down. This will repeat the formula across the lower cells.
5. Click “Share > Publish as a Web Page.” Under Sheets to Publish select “Sheet 2″, and click “Start Publishing”.
6. Under Get a link to the published data, select “HTML to embed in a page” and copy the code.
7. Open WordPress and paste the code in the page you’d like to share it on.

A few months ago I switched www.billerickson.net to Tumblr so that I could them to aggregate all my content from other places (twitter, comments on other blogs, photos…). I kept my blog at blog.billerickson.net, my resume at cv.billerickson.net, and my consulting website at www.ericksonmediagroup.com.

Now I’ve built a single site that hosts everything. I might make a few changes to the lifestream after GigaOM releases GigaPrologue, but we’ll see.

This redesign also better shows my focus on WordPress Consulting. I’ve been doing this for the past few years, but under the guise of “Web Design.” I’ve found that by getting specific and telling everyone you’re a WordPress Dev, it seems to result in more workflow.

What do you think of it?

We’ve officially moved into our office, The Creative Space. It’s a collaborative working space for 372 Media, BuildingProcess.com, Erickson Media Group (me), and Cody Marx Bailey. We have 3 offices on the 5th floor of the Varisco Building in Downtown Bryan, and have plenty of room to expand. We feel that a lot of great ideas and startups will come out of this group of tech creatives all working in the same area. We’re also encouraging other creatives to join The Creative Space and get an office up there with us (currently planning offices for photographers and painters, contact me if you’re interested).

I love working in this environment. The first day we were all up there, I decided to redesign Erickson Media Group, and after going back and forth with Roby of 372, we came up with this new design across all my sites.

• Blogger
• Consultant
• Entrepreneur

What do you think of the new design?

What’s changed?

• Improved information architecture – The previous version had a menu that was completely unorganized. Every time a new page was added to the site, a link was added to the main menu. I broke the menu up into targeted user groups, updated content (newsletter), and most important pages.
• Better integration of WordPress – Before, I had installed wordpress for them to post all the new content: things like events, news, jobs… and each week they sent out an email with a long list of all the new stuff. But it wasn’t well defined – if I wanted a job, I had to look through all the news and events to get to it. I’ve broken the different types of content into categories, and created an event calendar so people can easily see what’s coming up. Also, this will make updating the site a lot easier for the staff.
• Cool, flashy stuff – Homepage is using SlideshowPro to present eye-catching pictures of important things. Live chat with staff on homepage (through meebo), event calendar on the homepage, and I’ve made the site wider to accommodate more content (previous version had been designed for 800×600).

Check it out and tell me what you think.