WordPress allows you to add custom forms and track entries from within the platform. Forms should be treated as an intake rather than long term storage of the data. The form data entries should be deleted once the data is collected.
Note: Our goal is to limit the amount of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) or Personal Health Information (PHI) is collected through forms for data security.
PII/PHI Includes (but is not limited to):
- Full name, maiden name, mother’s maiden name, or alias
- Personal identification numbers (e.g., social security, passport, driver’s license, etc.)
- Street or email address
- Phone number
- It can even include seemingly general information like a person’s birthday, zip code, and gender, since they can be enough to identify an individual.
Add form
- To add a form, you’ll first need to navigate to the Forms section of the left hand navigation menu, then select “Add New.”
- Follow the on-screen prompts to generate fields for your form. On the right side of the screen, you’ll see a list for different types of fields including standard options (like generic text fields and drop-down menus) and more advanced fields (like Email and CAPTCHA). When you click on a field, it will add it to the form editor where you can make changes and customize your form. Each field has various options for customization. If you need help understanding what the options mean, just mouse over the question mark icon for a description.
Here is a preview of the structure of your form using the fields you added. The buttons on the right side of each block let you expand it to make edit, duplicate the block, or delete it. You can also mouse over the block to movie it if you want to change the order.
Don’t forget to hit Update to save your form, then click Preview on the top of your screen to see how it will look on the website.
Manage form entries (responses)
To set up notifications for a form, go to the main forms page and click on the Settings link for the form you want to edit. Then, select Notifications from the dropdown menu. You can also change other settings for the form here, including adding a confirmation message or editing button text.
Under the notifications tab, you can add detailed information about where you want notifications to be sent. Use the “Configure Routing” option if you want to send notifications to different addresses based on what was entered into the form.
To see a list of form submissions, click on the Entries tab on the left hand navigation (or at the top of the window). Here, you can see all the people that have submitted an entry to your forms. Click on the name to see more detailed information about the submission.
Embed form
To add your form on a webpage, you need to either (option 1) embed the form directly on the page OR (option 2) create a new page and embed the form on that page to link on the other page.
Option 1: Embed form directly on page
- Add a content block and choose “Forms” from “Embed” options.
- Select the form from the dropdown that you want to embed on the page. The form will appear where the content block is to embed the form directly on the page.
- Update or publish page.
Option 2: Add form as a link on a page
- Create a new page. Title it according to the form to provide enough context detail for the user.
- The steps are the same as embedding the form directly on a page:
- Add a content block and choose “Forms” from “Embed” options.
- Select the form from the dropdown that you want to embed on the page. The form will appear where the content block is to embed the form directly on the page.
- Update or publish page.
- Go to the page where you want to include the link as a form. Highlight the text and select the “link” option.
- Type the name of the page with the embedded form.
- Make sure to publish or update page as needed.