Forms allow you to collect information from your site visitors. Whether it’s registering an account, logging into your site, providing you with feedback on your product, contacting you or subscribing to your newsletter, you collect data through forms.
With WordPress, it’s quite easy to integrate a form into your website. Most of the themes will give you common forms like login, register and contact us now.
The problem, however, is that you might not like the ones that are included by default. Maybe you want one that fits in better with your overall theme or collects other data,
In this article, I’ll show you how to create good-looking forms that match your theme’s design and color scheme without having to write any HTML or CSS.
Install a WordPress signup form plugin
There are dozens of free and paid plugins that you can use to create custom forms. In this example, we will be using a free plugin called Ultimate Member.
The best thing about this plugin is that it creates everything for you: forms, pages, email newsletters, and so on. It also has a super customizable form builder that provides a huge collection of field types (e.g. date picker and file upload), as well as thousands of icons that you can include in your form to make it eye catching.
Before you begin, you’ll need to install the plugin first. To do that, follow these steps:
- Login to your WordPress admin dashboard.
- Navigate to Plugins > Add New
- Use the search bar to search “Last member“
- Install and activate the plugin (the option highlighted in the image below)
Once the installation is complete, you will find the file Last member tab on your dashboard. Navigate to Ultimate Member > Settings to see all options.
Custom pages and newsletters
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, the Ultimate Member plugin helps create the different types of pages you would typically need on your website.
You can also include newsletter subscription requests in your website and customize the welcome email (Account activation email) according to your taste.
You can customize the various pages and modules from below the Appearance form. Now, let’s see how to create forms in your website.
Creating shapes
Navigate to Final Members > Forms in the WordPress dashboard. There you should find the default Login, Sign in And Profile the shapes.
You can modify any of these modules or create a new one from scratch. By clicking on change on any of the forms will take you to the form builder.
Here we have fields for username, first name, last name, email address and password. The first four are all text boxes, while password is a password type field, like a text field but with masked input.
You can add a new field or customize an existing field. To customize an existing field, simply click the pencil icon next to the field name and a modal containing the field details will appear.
Here you can see a number of input customization options. You can get more information about each option by hovering over the question mark icon above it. A hint will appear.
To add a new field, click on + icon below the other fields to open the fields manager.
Choose the type that matches what you want to collect using that input. You can also choose a custom field below (if you’ve created one before).
After choosing your field, a new modal will appear where you need to provide details about your input (title, placeholder, etc.) and add an icon. When done, click To add button to add the field to the form.
To see what the form looks like, click on the Live preview button located at the top of the form builder.
You can also add things like margin, fill, border color, radio border or even attach a CSS class to each input using the line editor (click the pencil icon just below Live preview).
With these tools, you can easily create eye-catching shapes and make them blend into your overall theme design.
Conclusion
While there are many other plugins that you can use to create forms, Ultimate Member is definitely among the richest in features. Not to mention it’s free!
