Creating and Editing a User Form

Forms on your website are important to interact with your users. They allow you to collect information, subscribe for events, and more. There are dozens of different programs that create forms on your website, but we believe this one is by far the very best. Heres how to use it. 

Creating a new form

On your tool bar, click on Caldera Forms. This will show you a listing of your current forms and the number of entries each form has received. 

To create a new form, click New Form from the top bar which will show a popover of several pre-programed forms you can choose from and edit to make your own. But lets start with a blank one. Click Blank Form, give it a name, and click Create Form.

You should see a wide open page with a white horizontal bar, a grey dashed border bar, a row of green text, and a flashing box that says Add Field. Click and drag that box down to the white bar. This will open a popover box with TONS of different form elements to choose from. Lets start simple and choose the Single Line Text. Press Set Field to to the right of it.

Along the right side is a set of various options that control just that one element. Give it a name, and the Slug will automatically fill (this is a code the system will be able to read, each element needs to have a unique slug, so don’t change it unless prompted to). Play around with the different options and click the grey plus button to add another row. Don’t worry, until you press Save Form, no one will see what you’ve done.

Once you’ve added a new row, you’ll see a small circled plus button under the row, click that to insert a new field element. Both buttons do the same thing, so feel free to use them interchangeably. 

Saving your form

Always save, and save often. At the top of the screen is a blue Save Form button. Click that to save your form. Until you add your form to a post or page, no one will be able to see it. More on that later.

Add a submit button

Your form is just about useless without a submit button. Add a new field element, and select Button, give it a name, and your done. The automatic type of button is the submit button to send your form. There is also a reset option to make it delete all the user’s entries, and several other options we don’t need to get into.

Choosing who to send the result to

Along the top of the edit window, click Email to open the Email Notifications Settings. Here you will see lots of fields. The first being From Name. When the results are emailed, this is the name shown on the email. Likewise, the From Email is the email address sending from. Neither of these need to be real names or addresses.

Reply to Email is handy if you want to instantly reply to the user who completed the form, if you collected their email address in the form. Click this box once or twice to display a dropdown of your fields bookended by a percent sign(%). Choose the name of the field you collected their email address in and you’re set.

Next, slide down to Email Recipient. This is the box you will insert your email address, or the address you want form submission to be sent to. After that, set the Email Subject. I could get geeky on you if you want to know what the other choices do, or you can just ignore the other boxes and you’re done.

 

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