Online forms are an efficient way to open the lines of communication with your site visitors.
Use forms for simple things like contact pages, or more complex things like program applications, event registrations, lead generation and surveys. Collect and manage your form submissions through your website or with notifications.
For forms in the WashU Web Theme, we use a third-party plugin (tool) called Formidable Forms. We’ve pulled out some of their most useful tutorials and included them below.
To view additional forms tutorials or search for something specific, please visit the Formidable Forms documentation website.
Activating forms (first use only)
This tool is not in your Dashboard by default. You must activate it.
- From the WordPress dashboard, click Plugins in the left menu.
- Find Formidable Forms in the list of plugins, and click Activate.
Create a form
Before you can add a form to a page, you must create a form in the Dashboard of your site.
- Creating a form
- Enabling conditional logic in the form
- Field types, e.g. text, number, checkbox, file upload
- Field options, e.g. required, validation
- Form settings, e.g. button text, limiting number of entries
Warning: Formidable Forms are not HIPAA-compliant and should not be used to collect protected health information (PHI). See the guidelines to appropriate communication of PHI.
Add a form to a page
Once you’ve created a form, you can publish it on any page of your site.
Create an on-page confirmation message
When someone fills out a form on your site, it’s nice to give them an instant confirmation that their submission “went through.” The confirmation message appears on the page where the form was located before the person clicked “Submit.”
Send notification emails
After someone fills out a form, it’s nice to send them an email “receipt” of their form submission. You can customize the notification email with a personal message, too, like “Thank you for submitting your request. If you have any additional suggestions, call us at 314-XXX-XXXX.”
- Notifying the form submitter with an automatic response
- Customizing the email messaging
- Setting conditional logic for responses
View submissions
You can view form submissions two ways: through email notifications and in your Dashboard. Setting up email notifications prevents the need to constantly check your Dashboard for submissions.
- Send yourself and your team email notifications of submissions
- Important: Replace [admin_email] with your email
- Route emails based on conditional logic