Forum:Simple forms extension? or PHP custom page?

I am a sysop at Genealogy. We have a large amount of structured data that we augment our articles with. It is important that this information be enterred and kept in this form so that we can use it with DPL and external applications such as bots and genealogy programs.

So I know this is somewhat unwiki like, but what I am after is a simple fill in the blank form (birth month, day, year, Birth city, county, state.. and so on) a that would output some wikitext. We are using this structured data already to share tabular data on multiple pages via pseudo queries using templates. (William the conquerer article) Anyway, the encoding of the data in wikitext is a little scary for naive users, so a fill in the blanks thing seems like a reasonable solution. The requirements would be satisfied by one form only so I really don't need a generalized solution. I know there is a couple of ways of doing this, but I am curious if anyone has done this on wikia/ could comment on the recommended solution.

I know it is possible to create custom php pages or custom extensions that do this, like inputbox>. I also know that some wikis use the Simple Forms extension to do this sort of thing. (However, I notice it is not in the extensions list- any thought that it might be included at some time?)

Any suggestions on which direction to go?
 * 1) Do a custom php like donate- Post the data so it looks like what an edit page would produce
 * 2) Write an extension like inputbox, and get it approved/installed on our wikia only.
 * 3) Request Simple extension for our wikia as a general solution (are we talking weeks, months, years for the evaluation?).

Any educated opinions/ informed wild ass guesses are welcome. Uninformed Wags? well what the heck- just so you give me fair warning that it may turn out to be horse manure.
 * ~  Ph l o x  16:49, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Forms would be useful in lots of places
Even tho wikis seem simple enough to us, lots of people are intimidated. There are people we need to collect data from and a form would be just the thing. What's happening? Did anyone ever answer this question? Thanks --Beth Ogilvie 22:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC) (sysop, SolarCooking)

CreatePage
CreatePage is one of Wikia's optional extensions that I found. I just asked them to install it, but it hasn't gone through yet so I can't give real feedback.

Still, from what it looks like, it should be able to meet your needs.

-Matthew 23:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh, I think this is a fantastic idea. I don't especially need WYSIWYG, but a simple form extension that could be set up to autocomplete a template (not exactly in the standard wiki sense) would be great for inexperience and veteran users alike. --Wild Industry 07:25, 24 August 2008 (UTC)