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Show HN: Jumprock.co – HTML Forms for Static Sites
- therov 9y agoHey all, I am the creator of https://Jumprock.co https://Jumprock.co. This is a rebrand from an earlier project I did called Formpost. It includes aliased names to not expose email addresses and custom fields now.
- sharemywin 9y agoI was thinking there might be a piece of javascript to read and write a cookie to a hidden field so you could keep a session variable for multiple page forms.
- therov 9y agoI like that idea. Something to add to the list of new features.
- seanwilson 9y agoAny plans to charge for it? What will you do about server load if it got popular or is this not an issue?
- therov 9y agoCurrently you can get custom fields for 14.99 per year. Server load isn't really an issue.
- le-mark 9y agoWhy did you rebrand and lose any inbound links you may have accumulated?
- captn3m0 9y agoSuggestion: use input type=hidden instead of display:none on the honeypot
- lozzo 9y agoIt looks real good. but I don't get the catch: is it free service ? is there a guarantee on the time between the user posting the form and me receiving the email ? what if your site is down ?
- Piskvorrr 9y agoFYI, there's no guarantee of delivery, ever, where e-mails are involved. Guaranteed delivery is not one of its features. Best-effort store-and-forward, yes; for guaranteed delivery, you need a different tool. (I do wonder what's in it for Jumprock, too)
- therov 9y agoExcellent questions. It is free unless you want to use custom fields. The emails go into a queue which is listened for and processed when items are added. I have 3 that listeners that run simultaneously to handle email sending. If the site goes down then the emails are lost. I'm still working on a solution of multi region load balancing with high availability to ensure this doesn't happen.
- xiphias 9y agoWouldn't it be good to add paypal as an option? I don't need your service, but I'm always hesitant to give out my credit card number this easily.
- cenourinhapt 9y agoHow does it deal with Spambots?
- dlbucci 9y agoOne of the example forms has a honeypot input. Any submission where that field is non-empty is discarded.
- foo101 9y agoThis will not take a lot of time for spambots to figure out. Would it? Are there any web-application-firewall level spambot filtering that would ensure that the bot traffic can be continually monitored and the rules to block spambots can be continually updated?
- therov 9y agoAs far as I know the reverse captcha (thats what the honeypot is) is still not seen by bots and they just fill out the field as per usual.
- napolux 9y agoIn my previous job an honeypot field with a random name in the form of email__($randomString of 3 to 6 chars) was enough to block 100% of the spam. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
- foo101 9y agoI am sure that worked for you and I do not want to undermine the importance of simplicity. However my question was drawn from my previous experience where it was one hell of a task to keep the spam bots out. Therefore, just to offer a counterpoint, I would like to register my experience here. A random name surely did not do the trick for us. Simple tricks like creating a random hidden field would be broken by spambots in less than 48 hours. It took a great deal of expensive WAFs like Barracuda and a lot of Lua scripting combined with cookie analysis (and overall request header analysis) to detect spambots with only a 90%-95% accuracy and keep them out.
- wanda 9y agoSeems similar to Formspree[0], which one can self-host[1], but lacks the aliasing feature of your solution. Looks very cool! [0]: https://formspree.io https://formspree.io [1]: https://github.com/formspree/formspree https://github.com/formspree/formspree
- zackify 9y agoWhy do these apps keep getting upvoted and created? Formspree has been around a long time, I don't understand it :P
- marktangotango 9y agoI was offering a cors sevice with a rest api to sql database, authentication, email signup, and captcha, tools to build everything for static sites. Zero interest for it. These things sound great but no one really uses them in practice.
- ChuckMcM 9y agoCould be the wrong take away. People seem to implement this sort of capability themselves a lot. So there is going to be a small marginal value to a 'canned' version, web sites are also particularly careful with emails and other PII people send them so a service approach runs the risk of the service harvesting that data and reselling it without the web site owners knowledge or approval. And finally, I expect a quick crawl of the web would turn up a zillion different 'tweaks' that individual sites make for their particular application, so it would be hard for them to use a pre-baked one.
- dan9408 9y agoFor others looking for a self-hosted alternative like Formspree I wrote something similar that deploys to AWS Lambda [0]. Nothing fancy, just a AWS Lambda endpoint that uses SES to send emails. Instead of aliasing email addresses for privacy like OP I just use the native Node.js crypto module to create a hex string of the address upfront. [0] https://github.com/danielireson/formplug-serverless https://github.com/danielireson/formplug-serverless
- sidyapa 9y agoIs there a daily/monthly limit?
- throwaway2016a 9y agoVery cool. Good job. I use a relatively simple AWS API Gateway -> AWS Lambda -> AWS SES for this. But as trivial as it was to set up it is still way more work than this looks like. Having something more turn-key is nice.
- nblavoie 9y agoHow do you filter spam ?
- exodust 9y agoit says: honeypot input
- rcraft 9y agoLove these type of tools especially when using with github pages. Anyone have any other tool recommendations that work well with github pages and other static sites?
- antibland 9y agoI use Formspree [0] for GitHub Pages hosted stuff, and it is dead simple. I've never been spammed, as it requires a human click ("I'm not a robot") for the email to send. [0] https://formspree.io https://formspree.io
- fiatjaf 9y agoA stupid (but working!) solution I came up with the other day. Submit forms from your static site to Telegram: https://telegram.me/submissionsbot https://telegram.me/submissionsbot
- JeanSebTr 9y agoStaticman[0] is great. Same principle where you only have to POST to an API but with user content stored in Github. There's a free hosted version and it's open source. [0] https://staticman.net/ https://staticman.net/ Edit: Disclaimer: the company I work for Sponsor their hosting.
- boffinism 9y agoHave you thought about GDPR compliance? I don't understand GDPR very well, but it looks to me like your system would be, as it doesn't store emails sent. If so, GDPR-readiness might be a good feature to advertise on your homepage.
- johnchristopher 9y agoThere's not really such a thing as being GDPR compliant. It's more about being ready when someone will be coming for a privacy related trial or information removal or when the infrastructure will leak data and the national privacy agents knocks on your door and asks "what did you do to prevent it ?". Best efforts. Except for the GAFA. And public agencies (best best efforts). Source: working in a public agency and attending a lot of GDPR intro sessions and watching the consultants walking down the corridor.
- boffinism 9y agoThat's a really helpful description, thank you!
- colinramsay 9y agoThat's interesting, and echoes my understanding, but what would you do when a client says "we want to be GDPR compliant"? I'm not sure saying "there's no such thing" would really wash. Do you have any resources that might help?
- johnchristopher 9y agoIt really depends on the kind of business relationship you have with your client and the field you are in. Questions such as "Are you managing data for them ?", "Who does the actual data encoding ?", "What kind of data are we managing", etc., are on the table. I'd just say what I wrote in the previous post and talk about the DPO, the infosec manager, etc. What I am hearing and seeing a lot right now is: hire a consulting gig for a few days that will set you up (good practices, business analysis, risks assessment, iso 27000 and 27001 compliance) and then hire a different consulting gig for two days that will be your DPO and make him come back every 6 months or year to show you are doing your best to prevent leaks. It really does depend on the nature of your field. The other thing I hear a lot: those UK law firms that sell GDPR consulting certificates ? Don't waste money on that. I couldn't really recommend any consulting firm, I only know two of them and I am not involved (yet) enough in the process. But basically we (a public agency) went the consulting gig road and share the fee with other agencies. Oh, and I am not a lawyer of course.
- yesimahuman 9y agoNice! I built something like this a while back, never brought it to market. Might think about processing inputs and generating CSVs, having a simple tablular view in a dashboard, etc. It's a "backend for forms."
- artpar 9y agoYou might find useful a self-hosted headless cms https://github.com/daptin/daptin https://github.com/daptin/daptin
- zackify 9y agoYou could use this docker image instead as well https://github.com/encryption/contact https://github.com/encryption/contact
- sntran 9y agoNice! The alias (or the lack thereof) is one thing that keeps me from using Formspree, as I don't want the email addresses to be exposed. One suggestion I have is to support aliases in CC and BCC fields as well. You already have the implementation. Of course, the alias should support multiple email addresses in one.
- clon 9y agoEach generation invents their own tools. The cycle has reached FrontPage Server Side Includes. Soon the new PHP will emerge.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoIt will probably be something that compiles to javascript made with babel.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoUm no. This is for when you don’t have a server.
- jordanlev 9y agoI mentor and teach a lot of designers and beginning front-end developers. Services like this and FormSpree are a godsend for allowing them to create functioning contact forms on websites without having to go down the server-side rabbit hole. Also, even though I'm fully capable of building my own form handling back-end, if I'm just building a static site it's nice not to have to deal with all that just for a simple contact form.
- jonny_eh 9y agoNew tools solve problems, but create some new (hopefully smaller) problems, which opens the possibilities for new solutions.
- rathboma 9y agoLikewise I also have a similar service offering form endpoints. Plus I built a bootstrap-native form builder (generates a bootstrap form and inserts it with JS, not an iframe). I also have Slack, and webhook notifications. https://www.99inbound.com https://www.99inbound.com
- edent 9y agoCool. You should consider using input type="tel" for capturing phone numbers - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/tel https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/in... On a mobile device, it will automatically pop up the number-pad. Makes life a little easier for people filling in the form. Similarly, input type="email" will pop up a keyboard with an @ symbol. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/input/email https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/in...
- GroSacASacs 9y agovery good, and also may provide smarter autofill
- shapiro92 9y agoliterally 1 zappier integration.
- fiatjaf 9y agoI must say "Honeypot" solutions don't work at all.
- therov 9y agoAny suggestion?
- Jack5500 9y agoI'm looking for something similar: A visual form builder that I can self host for a form just a little more complex than a contact form. Does anybody know a solution that offers that?
- simonhamp 9y agoFor completeness, there’s also Formkeep (https://formkeep.com/ https://formkeep.com/) which is similar.
- dmitrygr 9y agoSo, I take it they have never heard of simply doing <form action="mailto:destination@example.com" method="post" enctype="text/plain"> Simpler and does not disclose your data to third parties.
- Piskvorrr 9y agoSimpler for you. Far more confusing for users ("I clicked this and now my e-mail client is open, is that some sort of hack?!?"). This used to be promising, way back when HTML started; as good as dead nowadays.
- shapiro92 9y agohonestly what was just "created" serves no purpose. because I dont want to expose my address I use zappier and then add it to a google spreadsheet..
- m3tr0s 9y agoAlso you can use Google Apps Mail to send emails from a static site and save the field values to a spreadsheet at once for free: https://github.com/dwyl/html-form-send-email-via-google-script-without-server https://github.com/dwyl/html-form-send-email-via-google-scri...
- appleflaxen 9y agoIs it possible to deliver the messages to the email server in an encrypted way? I would not want my business communication being sent via cleartext/email.
- Jaruzel 9y agoWhat goes around, comes around I guess. Back in the maelstrom that was Web 1.0, where every person and their dog were uploading static html pages to their 'webspace' via FTP, these sort of services were two-a-penny, many ISPs even offered them as part of their 'webservices' packages. I'm not knocking it, it's just it's not a new idea.
- tvaughan 9y agoSee also: https://www.sumar.io https://www.sumar.io
- rebolyte 9y agoThings like this and Formspree are great for setting up a one-off site. If you get to choose the hosting though, Netlify offers form submission handling as part of their free tier, with email/Slack notifications, API access, and data export. https://www.netlify.com/docs/form-handling/ https://www.netlify.com/docs/form-handling/