ZigPress

In a previous article about “must-have” WordPress plugins, I mentioned cforms II, a powerful and versatile WordPress form plugin that can be used for anything from a newsletter signup to a multipart questionnaire. It can even take over the job of your normal comments form.

However, the version of cforms II that was in general use until quite recently, 10.5.2, was not compatible with WordPress 2.8, meaning that any WordPress site you have that uses cforms II is stuck on 2.7.1 until you upgrade cforms II to its latest version.

cforms II is not in the WordPress plugin repository, and you can’t update it via the normal “one-click” process on the WordPress admin plugins page. You have to do it manually, and I’m sure that many site owners will find this a little intimidating. The key, of course, is careful thought and planning.

The upgrade process

1. Download cforms II 10.6 and unzip it somewhere handy.
2. Back up your WordPress database. I do this using SQLyog, by creating a spare database on my local MySQL installation and using SQLyog’s “copy database to a different host or database” option. Nice and easy.
3. Back up your cforms II plugin folder. I FTPed it down to my desktop. Careful not to overwrite the new plugin folder from step 1 if you put that on your desktop as well!
4. Create a new folder in your plugins folder (on your live site), called “cforms-custom”. This is optional and I didn’t need to do it myself, but it’s suggested that this is a good place to put any custom CSS files that you use with cforms II.
5. In cforms II global settings, use the “Backup settings” option and save the file to your desktop.
6. Deactivate the plugin.
7. Upload the new cforms plugin folder to your plugins folder, overwriting everything.
8. Refresh your WordPress admin plugins page to ensure that the plugin now shows its version as 10.6, then reactivate it.
9. Before you do anything else, clear your browser cache. If you fail to do this, your AJAX forms won’t work initially.
10. Test all your forms.

Oh no, something went wrong!

I am neither willing nor able to offer a full diagnostic service to the general public via this website; however, it’s only fair that I tell you how to revert to previous settings if something goes horribly wrong.

So, if your forms stop working, here’s how to revert.

1. Deactivate the plugin.
2. Delete the cforms folder in your plugins folder.
3. Upload the old cforms folder you downloaded.
4. Delete the PREFIX_cformsdata, PREFIX_cformssubmissions and PREFIX_options tables from your live database, and restore them from the backup you took. Replace “PREFIX” with whatever your WordPress database table prefix happens to be.
5. Refresh your plugins page and reactivate the old version.
6. If you still have problems, restore its global settings from the file you saved, then deactivate and reactivate it again.

In my case the upgrade process worked first time, upgrading cforms II from 10.5.2 to 10.6 on WordPress 2.7.1, on a Linux server running PHP 5.2.6 and MySQL 5.0.45. It took about half an hour, working methodically and checking each step carefully. One WordPress installation down, quite a few to go…

I’ve never used a version of cforms II older than 10.5.1, so if your current version is older than that, these steps may not be appropriate for you – please check the cforms II forum for advice.

A note on AJAX forms

There’s no reason why AJAX forms should stop working until your browser cache is cleared; this is a shortcoming of the cforms II plugin’s coding and should be fixable. I have a specific fix in mind, and will post an article when I’m confident that it works reliably.