Currently we are using a plugin called, “Ninja Forms” to add form functionality to our Word Press.

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To view a short video on how to add forms to your site, click here
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Using Ninja Forms is fairly straight forward, here’s how:

From the Dashboard, mouse over “Ninja Forms”

You will see on the pop out menu, Dashboard, Add New, Submissions as well as a few other options.

• clicking on “Dashboard” will take you to a page listing all of your existing forms
• clicking on “Add New” … should be self explanatory
• clicking “Submissions” will take you to a page from which you can view submissions for each of your forms.

Adding new forms to your site

To add a new form, click on the “Add New” link off of the Ninja Forms link in your Dashboard.  ON the following page there are many preset “templates” in Ninja Forms.  Click on, “Blank Form”

The following screen is divided into two columns : the form preview on the left and the form fields on the right.

There are preset User Information fields for you to chose from the right such as, firstname, lastname, email phone, etc.  Clicking on the field in the right column will populate the left column with that field.

Additionally, you can add “Common Fields” to your form (such as checkboxes, date fields, single line text, multiline text and file uploads.)

You can add text to your form by clicking on the “HTML” field.

When you are done adding fields to your form, add the “Submit” field (found in the Common Fields section).

Customizing Form Fields

All form fields can be customized.  Clicking on the form field in the form preview (the left column) will open a new display in the right column with configuration options (such as Label, placeholder, default value etc.)  Also, you can make a field required by clicking on the “Required Field” button.

Naming your form

All forms need a title.  At the top of the page, click on “Advanced” > “Display Settings”. Enter the title of your form in the Form Title field.  On this page, there are also other form display options including where or not to display the title, clear and hide succesfuly filled out the forms.

Form actions

Now that your form is built, you will want to have it do something.  Ninja forms by default come with 3 actions: “Success Message”, “Email Admin” and “Store Submission”.  You can customize these actions or add new actions.

To do so:

click on the “Emails & Actions” link at the top of the page, doing so will show you the default actions.

To customize these actions, click on the name.  For example, here is the customization options for the “Success Message”:

You can change the name of the action or the content of the success message.  You may want to show the applicant the fields that they entered.  To do so, click on the icon that looks like a lined piece of paper:

You can select any or all of the fields in your form.

Adding an action

You may want to add an action (eg. emailing the applicant).  Here’s how to do it:

At the bottom right of the main Emails & Actions page click on the plus sign

This will open a right column with various actions.  If you want to add an email action, click on “Email.”  This will open the Email action editing window where you can customize the email.

You should change the name of this email action to something that is more meaningful, such as, “Email to Applicant”.

You should change the “TO” field so that the message is sent to the address that was provided by the applicant (assuming you have an email field in your form.)  To do this, delete the default “{wp:admin_email}” and click on the lined piece of paper icon.  This will again, allow you to select from the fields that you set up in your form, select email.

You should change the subject line to make it meaningful to the applicant.

You can also edit the content of the email.  You can include any and all fields from your form by once again, clicking on the lined piece of paper icon.

When you are done customizing the email, click “DONE”.

Publishing your form

When you are ready to publish your form, click “PUBLISH”.  You will then have to click on “X” at the top right to return to the Ninja Forms Dashboard.

Adding forms to your pages

You can add forms to any page or post on your site.  To add a form go to the page or post and click on the “Add Form” button on your page/post, and then select the name of the form that you want included.