Show Form in Posts or Pages

HTML Forms provides two ways to show your forms on your WordPress posts or pages. You can either use the shortcode or the block found in the WordPress block editor.

Shortcode

After creating your form, the plugin will show you a shortcode with a slug attribute that represents the form’s title.

This shortcode allows you to show the form in your WordPress posts, pages and widget areas.

The slug acts as an identifier, so the plugin knows which of your forms to show. Since the slug is based on your form’s title, it should also help you remember which form is showing where.

Block

The WordPress Block Editor is the new standard for creating most posts and pages. In fact, it’s becoming the standard for many other areas of the WordPress interface as well. You can easily show a form in any post type using the Block Editor. Simply type in one of the HTML Forms plugin’s block keywords (html, form, contact):

Then you simply select the form you want to show:

Creating Your First Form

After installing and activating the HTML Forms plugin, you should have a menu item in your WordPress admin labeled HTML Forms.

To create your first form, go to the HTML Forms menu and click the Add New link. You can also go to the All Forms link and click the Add New Form button at the top of the screen.

Choose a name for your form and hit the Create Form button. You will now be taken to the form editor, where you can actually configure your form.

Defining Form Fields

This part is what makes HTML Forms special.

Your actual form fields can be defined using normal HTML. That means you can use regular <input> elements to define what fields your form should contain.

The only thing of importance here is that each of your input elements should have a unique name attribute if you want HTML Forms to save the value of that field.

Don’t Know HTML?

If you don’t know what HTML is, you can also use our field helper to generate field HTML.

The great thing here is that you don’t have to choose yet another template language. Using our field helper should even help you learn HTML for yourself. Win-win!

Submissions

By default, HTML Forms will save each successful form submission in your database. These submissions can then be viewed by going to the Submissions tab on the page where you edit your form.

Form Actions

You can configure additional actions to run by opening up the Actions tab and choosing one of the available actions at the bottom of that page.