Online Forms Plugin for WordPress

The Gravity Forms Plugin for WordPress works for almost any form you can dream up, is unbelievably easy to use and has so many extra features I am planning several more articles dedicated to this plugin.

You do have to pay for this plugin but the $39 is well worth it. Click on the banner below to purchase or find out more.

Why Use Forms?
Forms are very “take action now”. If a potential client is visiting your website, reading about your product, you don’t want them to have to wait until 9am to call you or print an application to post/fax because chances are they never will.

Important Form Elements
Online forms should be easy for clients to fill in but include enough fields to provide you with the basic information you need. Once sent you should receive the information via email and your client should receive an email with your personal message as appropriate to the form they filled in.

My Favourite Gravity Features

• Linking to MailChimp to add newsletter opt in to all forms
• Being able to personalise the user confirmation email with their name etc
• Using post fields to create a form which becomes a blog post

More posts on these features and more coming soon!

How to Use Gravity Forms

Purchase and download the Gravity Forms Plugin. Upload to your plugins folder and activate. Instructions and screenshots below.

Create a New Form

1. Click on the Forms section which appears on your admin sidebar
2. Click on New Form to create your first form
3. Give your form a name and description, decide on the wording on the Submit button and customise the text which appears on your web page once the form has been submitted
4. Click on field types in the boxes on the right to add them to your form (these include text boxes, drop-down lists and much more)
5. Give each a name and decide  whether it is a required field or not (ie. will the form still send if the client doesn’t type anything in that field)
6. Save the form and click on Setup Notifications at the bottom of the form

Setting Up Admin Email Notifications

These are both for you and the person who has filled in the form.

1. Tick the box at the top to enable notification
2. Add your email address
3. Select the email field from the drop-down box for both from and reply to email
4. Add a subject so you or your email programme recognise them immediately
5. Under message insert {all_fields} from the dropdown list

Setting Up User Notifications

1. Tick the box at the top to enable notification
2. Send to email field
3. Add your email address to the from and reply fields
4. Add a subject so the user recognises who the email is from
5. Under message type your message. You can use form fields from the dropdown list to personalise your message further

Add Your Form to a page/post

Click on the little form icon which appears above your post content box, select your form from the list and click insert. Save or publish your page.

It’s that simple!

View my contact form live (result of screenshots above).