If you haven't got a form on your website to capture valuable user data, you need to get one. Just because you're an affiliate and passing sales someone else's way, doesn't mean you shouldn't be focusing on your own email list and building relationships with your visitors, and a simple form is the best way to do that. Over the years we've used a number of WordPress form plugins, Gravity Forms being our favourite. But Gravity Forms is a premium plugin that we have to pay for.
Our second favourite was always Contact From 7, a free form plugin. The problem with Contact From 7 is that it isn't very user-friendly to set up. Unless you are quite technical and aren't scared of shortcodes and CSS, Contact Form 7 is a bit daunting. And then along came Happy Forms by Theme Foundry. And it does make us happy.
It's easy to install and set up and is compatible with any WordPress theme. It's a very visual drag and drop interface so you can play around with the fields you want and be able to see in real time what it looks like.
To set up a form is dead easy. Install the plugin like you would any other and click to add a new form. Here's a quick step by step guide…
How to Add a New Happy Form
To start adding fields to your form, simply drag the required field from the centre panel. The field will appear on the left with a preview of your form on the right.
Start with a short text field…
And if you're feeling fancy, have a look at the Advanced settings…
Carry on adding fields until you have your form.
HAPPY FORMS FIELDS EXPLAINED
SHORT TEXT
For single line text fields like First Name or Last Name
LONG TEXT
For longer paragraphs, so if you want someone to be able to leave a message or question
EMAIL
For the users email address
WEBSITE LINK
Where relevant you might want to ask the user for their website URL
MULTIPLE CHOICE
You might want to collect some data from the user so giving them a multiple choice question could work. Perhaps you want to know what devices they use, or what languages they speak. This field is then perfect for collecting that information and the user can select multiple options.
SINGLE CHOICE
This is a radio button field, good for yes/no answers. The user can only select one.
This image shows you how to add the options when setting up single and multiple choice fields;
TABLE
This is a way of presenting your multiple choice and single choice fields in a table format
DROPDOWN
Users can select one option from a dropdown menu
NUMBER
Good if you want to ask a questions where people have to input a number. Like How many people work in your company or how many people in your household, etc. You can also use this instead of the more rigid Phone field. Good if you are collecting phone numbers with different country dialling codes
PHONE
User has to enter a valid phone number in the correct format
DATE & TIME
Pretty self-explanatory. Use this if you want to collect date and time data. For example, you could ask when your users what date they want to achieve a certain goal by
ADDRESS
This field allows you to collect address or geographical data
SCALE
This is a sliding scale, which might be useful if you are doing a poll or something like that. For example, ‘on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate this website'?
TITLE
Mr, Mrs, Ms, etc. Logically it seems better to have this at the top of your form so you can add the field so it appears in the left panel, and then drag and drop it where you want it
LEGAL
Good for GDPR blurb and getting your users to tick that they have read and agree to any terms and conditions your might have
RATING
This is for anyone wanting to collect star ratings
PLACEHOLDER
This is if you want to add any extra text or spacing
Formatting Your Form
Once you've added all your fields to the form, you can change the order they appear in by simply dragging and dropping them in the left hand panel
When you're done, click the Next Button to set up the notifications for the form.
Notification Settings
This is where you set up who gets an email when the form is completed and submitted by a user, what the users sees when they submit the form, and the confirmation email the users gets after successfully submitting the form…
Click Next to complete any formatting of the form. In this section you can play with the form title, the width of the form and all the various elements and colours
Save Form and Add to Page
Once you're happy with your form you can now save it and start adding it to the page(s) or widget you want to display it on.
Always check how the form looks and TEST IT! Make sure you get the correct messages when you submit the form and then check your email to make sure you are receiving the information correctly and that the user confirmation email looks good.
If you need more help, check out the video to see us build a form from scratch. You might be interested in some of our other videos so check out the WP Eagle YouTube channel here.
Comments
Hi I am trying to learn the ins and outs of wordpress and some of the plug ins. Would like to ask these questions
1. The data that is being collected here, does this go directly to the wp database? Which I can view in the phpmyadmin?
2. Also, my project I want to have 5 built in forms which I need to connect to each other. Meaning any data that was entered in form 1 (e.g name, address) will also reflect in form 2 thus saving time for form completion
Hi Dee – thanks for the comment – In reply 1) Yeah it does, however Happy Forms have changed to a premium model so you have to pay. 2) I think you’ll be able to do this with the fantastic Gravity Forms. Good luck.
So now happyforms are also paid.
Any other free recommendation?
Thanks !!