Visual Form Builder is a WordPress plugin that enables website owners to create custom forms for their visitors to get in touch with them and send information. This plugin offers a wide range of features that make it easy to build advanced forms for various purposes. In this article, we will discuss the benefits of using Visual Form Builder and how to create different types of forms for your website.
What You Can Do with Visual Form Builder
There are several reasons why you might want to add a form to your website. Some of these include making it easy for your visitors to send you a message, book appointments, send files, submit questions, and even hire you. With the free version of Visual Form Builder, you can choose from an impressive selection of field types to add to your forms, including text, text area, checkbox, radio button, select list, address, date, email, URL, currency, number, time, phone, HTML, file upload, and instructions.
Visual Form Builder also makes it easy to ensure your visitors enter the correct information into each form field by automatically validating them. Additionally, this plugin adds anti-spam verification to your forms to prevent spammers from flooding your inbox with junk emails.
Other useful features of the free version of Visual Form Builder include storing submissions in the WordPress database, exporting submissions as a CSV file, sending submissions to multiple email addresses, redirecting users to a page or URL upon submission, sending confirmation receipts to users, duplicating forms to save time, arranging fields in columns, and customizing the form with CSS.
Guide to Using Visual Form Builder
To install Visual Form Builder on your site directly through your WordPress admin area, log in to your dashboard and go to Plugins > Add New. Search for Visual Form Builder and then click the Install Now button, followed by the Activate Now link to add it to your website. After activation, you will see a new item on the sidebar menu titled Visual Form Builder. From there, you can configure the plugin, export your forms, view form submissions, and add a new form.
Creating a New Form
The first stage of creating a new form is to give it a name, enter your name, set the reply-to-email, the subject of the email that will be sent, and which email address to send the form submission to. Once the essentials are entered, you can move on to creating the form. The next step is to click on the settings button at the top of the form builder page.
From here, you can determine who will receive a copy of the submission, what will happen to the user after they submit their form, and also whether to send a notification email to the user confirming their submission. Once the form is set up, the fields can be added. Adding the different types of fields to your form is as easy as clicking on one of the available options on the left. Once a field has been added to the form, it can then be dragged and dropped into place. The form fields can also be personalized to meet your requirements by clicking on the expand icon.
Publishing the Forms
Visual Form Builder makes it as easy as possible to insert a form into a post or page thanks to the button that it adds to the WordPress post editor. After clicking the Add Form button, you can then choose from all the existing forms that have been created and then insert the form into your post or page. If you need to change the location of the form, you can simply cut and paste the shortcode. To check out your new form, click the Preview post button to see it in action.
View Form Submissions
As well as sending the form submissions to a selection of email addresses of your choice, Visual Form Builder also stores submissions in your WordPress database. This means you can easily go back and view all form entries in one place inside your WordPress admin area, rather than searching through your inbox. When viewing individual submissions, you also get the option of printing them.
You can also export the stored form entries as a CSV file for viewing in an application like Excel. This makes it very easy to filter submissions, share them with colleagues, or back them up for safekeeping. This feature can be very useful for freelancers and service providers who can use it to quickly build a list of historic enquires from potential clients who they can then contact to generate more business.
Conclusion
Visual Form Builder is an ideal choice for anyone who wants to build more advanced forms than a basic contact form for their site. However, as it’s so easy to use, even those looking for a simple contact form solution will find it a suitable choice that gives them the option of building more complex forms as their needs grow. For those who need even more features, the pro version and its add-ons make an already useful plugin even more useful and are well worth checking out.
