HTML Forms – Simple WordPress Forms Plugin

Description

With HTML Forms, you can easily add multi-purpose forms to your WordPress site.

The idea behind HTML Forms is different than most other form builder plugins: You manage the form HTML. The plugin manages the PHP and a tiny bit of JavaScript.

That’s right. No “intuitive” drag & drop interface. We believe that dynamic form builders can be great, but they also severely limit your options. Also, they’re slow and overly complicated from a technical point of view.

HTML Forms aims to be simpler, faster and smarter. It’s the ideal plugin solution for developers looking for a simple way to create a contact form or other HTML form.

You define your form fields in HTML and the plugin takes care of submitting the form, saving the data and running a configurable set of form actions.

1. Define your form fields

You can use anything that is valid HTML. Just ensure all input elements in your form have a name attribute to save the data entered in that field.

2. Configure your form actions

By default, form submissions are automatically saved for you. You can configure several other actions to run when a form is submitted, like sending an email notification or subscribing to Mailchimp.

3. Show the form somewhere on your site

Show your form by using the [hf_form] shortcode in your WordPress posts, pages or widget areas.

HTML Forms features

• Full control over the HTML for the form fields. If you want, we’ll help you in generating the field HTML though.
• Each form submission is automatically saved in your database and can be viewed in a simple table format.
• Configure an unlimited amount of actions to run when a form is successfully submitted. For example, sending out email notifications.
• Access form field values by referencing the field name, eg [NAME] or [EMAIL].
• Hide form or redirect to URL after a successful submission.
• Configurable & translatable form messages.
• Field validation.
• Developer friendly. HTML Forms comes with a myriad of JavaScript events and WordPress hooks that allow you to modify or extend the plugin’s default behavior.

Who is this for?

HTML Forms is for everyone that wants a flexible & high performing form solution.

• Users. Managing your own site? With HTML Forms, you don’t need any technical knowledge to setup a contact form.
• Developers. Building a site for your client? You supply the form HTML, HTML Forms takes care of validating and processing the form.
• Theme developers. Shipping a theme? HTML Forms allows for complete blend-in with your theme, and you don’t have to write yet another contact form plugin.

With HTML Forms you can create any type of form. A contact form, email form, registration form, price quote form, you name it.

For more information, please visit htmlformsplugin.com.

Support

The HTML Forms knowledge base covers a wide range of frequently asked questions.

Use the www.ads-software.com plugin forums for community support where we try to help all of our users.

Contributing

You can contribute to HTML Forms in various ways. For example:

• Write about the plugin on your blog or share it on social media.
• Translate the plugin into your language using your www.ads-software.com account.

Screenshots

Blocks

This plugin provides 1 block.

• Form

Installation

1. In your WordPress admin panel, go to Plugins > New Plugin, search for HTML Forms and click “Install now“
2. Alternatively, download the plugin and upload the contents of html-forms.zip to your plugins directory, which usually is /wp-content/plugins/.
3. Activate the plugin

For more information, please refer to the HTML Forms Knowledge Base.

FAQ

Where can I find help?

Start by going through the HTML Forms knowledge base where we cover a wide range of frequently asked questions.

How to display a form in posts or pages?

Use the [hf_form] shortcode.

How to display a form in widget areas like the sidebar or footer?

Go to Appearance > Widgets, add the “Text Widget” to any of your widget areas and use the [hf_form] shortcode.

How do I show a form in a pop-up?

We recommend the Boxzilla pop-up plugin for this. You can use the [hf_form] shortcode in your pop-up box to render any of your forms.

Can I send an email when the form is submitted?

Yes! You can configure this by opening up the “Actions” tab when editing your form and clicking the “Email” button under “Available actions”.

Does the plugin include anti-spam measures?

The plugin comes with built-in spam protection that should stop all automated attacks. When the built-in protection doesn’t cut it, WPBruiser surely will.

Reviews

very good plug in, flexibility, I love it

kxpro July 8, 2024 1 reply

I can create forms with full control of the html I love it thank you

Great plugin and incredible support

stevejcoates June 14, 2024

The plugin works really well and gives great flexibility. The support is first class and they were able to resolve a very specific issue that I had in my slightly more unusual set up. Highly recommend

Time Savior!

shlxng February 25, 2024

I was strugling about 2years every time I tried to customize cf7 forms so its looks like in my desidns.Thanks to HTML Forms now it’s over!Huge thanks guys ?? ?? ??

This is the one

James Joseph Finn January 12, 2024 2 replies

I upgraded to pro on this one to get webhooks. For those with OCD attention to detail for clean code, like me, then this plugin is the way to go. One question: How do I add custom attributes to the form element? I’m attempting to prevent autofocus on page load by adding the attribute tabindex=0 to the form; unless you have an alternative recommended approach. Thank you for the great software!

Excellent plugin!!!

snippet24 December 14, 2023

I was planning on implement plugin less contact form till I found this one. Thank you for developing this ??

Best form plugin I’ve ever come across!

David Ha November 23, 2023

I was recommended by a friend, uninstalled CF7 immediately and switched to it! The performance is amazing, no CSS is loaded, only JS is loaded on the necessary page. The capacity of JS is also very small.

Contributors & Developers

Changelog

1.4.0

• Added a “Submissions” column to the forms table.
• New “Wrapper Tag” setting to configure what HTML tag wraps fields in the form editor.
• Added “Hide Preview” option to the form editor.
• Improved integration with the hCaptcha for WordPress plugin.
• Interface changes.

1.3.34 – July 7th, 2024

• Made the Submissions tab a direct link.
• Raw submission data is now scrollable.
• Added nonce verification to bulk actions on the HTML Forms list table.

1.3.33 – June 24th, 2024

• Fix for adding additional choices to the Dropdown, Checkboxes, and Radio Buttons fields.
• Fix to prevent XSS on form Messages.
• Fix for the Mailchimp action’s check for an email field.
• Interface changes.

1.3.32 – June 17th, 2024

• Better handling for line breaks in field data.
• Fix for the “d/m/Y” date format not being handled correctly.

1.3.31 – May 20, 2024

• Interface changes.

1.3.30 – Mar 7, 2024

• Run form mark-up through KSES filter if user lacks unfiltered_html capability.

1.3.29 – Feb 6, 2024

• Fix get_field_count() used for anti-spam protection not correctly counting fields when attribute key came directly after a line-break. Thanks yann1cks!
• Fix data-hide-if attribute not updating required fields correctly. Thanks yann1cks!
• Remove unused class input from Gutenberg block. Thanks yann1cks!
• Remove use of tlite JS dependency.
• Update JS dependencies.

1.3.28 – Sep 19, 2023

• Update browserslist to support the same set of browsers as WordPress core.
• Delay initializing the field builder component until the DOM has fully loaded. Fixes an issue with the file upload button (from HTML Forms Premium) not appearing.

1.3.27 – Jun 30, 2023

• Fix PHP notice for calling WPDB::prepare with mixed argument types.
• Update JS dependencies.

1.3.26 – Nov 15, 2022

• Add pagination to submissions overview page if there are more than 500 items to show.
• “Move to trash” action for submissions now properly called “Delete permanently”. Thanks to Rakesh Sabale.

1.3.25 – Oct 21, 2022

This release fixes a SQL injection vulnerability where users with the administrator role could execute arbitrary SQL commands.
Thanks to Nguyen Duy Quoc Khanh via WPScan for the responsible disclosure.

Other changes:

• Use default WordPress collation when creating tables. Props bengs.

1.3.24 – Sep 23, 2022

• Compatibility with Swup.js, thanks to Sam Brown
• Update JavaScript dependencies.

1.3.23 – Mar 2, 2022

• Add support for swup.js in conditional fields logic.
• Safer support for Full-Site Editing by splitting up registering and enqueueing of JS and CSS assets.

1.3.22 – Jun 7, 2021

• Always load minified asset files, regardless of SCRIPT_DEBUG constant.
• Optimize JavaScript event callbacks in form editor.
• Fix required fields logic for when field names have multiple spaces in them.
• Add action parameter to AJAX endpoint for submitting forms.

1.3.21 – May 14, 2021

• Add multisite compatibility for storing form submissions. Thanks to Ismail Hardoum.
• Fix required fields logic for fields with spaces in their name.
• Fix replacement variables logic for fields with spaces or special characters in their name.
• Add nonce verification to all URL’s using _hf_admin_action.

1.3.20 – May 7, 2021

• Change type of referer_url column in database to TEXT.
• Pass form object to hf_form_markup filter hook.
• Refresh form editor after navigating via tabs.

1.3.19 – Feb 16, 2021

• Add filter for file-uploads to use direct links to file instead of WP media attachment.
• Fix field variables not showing correctly in available tags for email action message body.

1.3.18 – Jan 13, 2021

• Updated JS dependencies.
• Change plugin domain to htmlformsplugin.com.

1.3.17 – Dec 21, 2020

• Forms are now sortable by name on overview page.
• Update internal dependencies to their latest versions.
• Add role="alert" to form messages.
• Optimize size of public JavaScript file (25% size reduction) by rewriting some dependencies.
• Add filter for tabs in admin area.

1.3.16 – May 6, 2020

• Add filter hook for successful form responses: hf_form_response
• Only try to detect WPBruiser hidden input fields whenever that plugin is activated.
• Stop explicitly enabling shortcodes in text widgets as this is now handled by WordPress core (as of version 4.9).
• Explicitly set engine and charset on submissions database table.

1.3.14 – Nov 6, 2019

Improvements

• Stop using supress_filters argument when retrieving forms, for a possible performance improvement.
• Prevent extra SQL query for options when global settings have not been saved yet.

1.3.13 – Oct 18, 2019

Fixes

• Special HTML characters being encoded even in plain text emails.

Improvements

• HTML tags are no longer stripped from field values, so forms can now accept HTML. HTML is still escaped upon display to prevent XSS.

1.3.12 – Oct 11, 2019

Compatibility with Mailchimp for WordPress 4.6.

1.3.11 – Sep 17, 2019

Improvements

• Write results from Mailchimp action to MC4WP debug log.

1.3.10 – Sep 5, 2019

Fixes

• PHP warning introduced in latest update when using array fields.

1.3.9 – Sep 2, 2019

Fixes

• Strip out WPBruiser token field to prevent it from being stored.

Improvements

• Add filter hooks to variables inside the email action. Thanks to Ryan Salerno.

1.3.8 – May 28, 2019

Fixes

• Invalid HTML for generated textarea tag.

Improvements

• Improved HTML escaping, preserve double and single quotes.
• Explicitly set charset of HTML emails to UTF-8 by default.
• Escape HTML after limiting string length, not before.

1.3.7 – April 8, 2019

Additions

• Add Gutenberg block for adding shortcode to content.
• Add setting in field builder for the multiple attribute on <select> elements.
• Add hf_get_forms() function for retrieving multiple form objects.

Improvements

• Add edit_form capability to user that activates the plugin.

1.3.6 – March 27, 2019

Improvements

• Don’t strip HTML from variable replacements in HTML emails. This change allows you to link to uploaded files properly.

1.3.5 – January 29, 2019

Improvements

• Allow adding form field variables to the form’s redirect URL.

1.3.4 – January 9, 2019

Improvements

• Reload available field variables when adding action on form settings page.
• Add role=”alert” attribute to all form messages.
• Emit “message” event whenever message is shown to user.

1.3.3 – November 6, 2018

Fixes

• Fix selected state of email content type.

Improvements

• Add filter & action hook for extending forms with custom messages & message settings.
• Don’t add line-breaks automatically when using HTML emails.
• Delete all related postmeta when deleting a submission.

1.3.2 – Aug 6, 2018

Improvements

• Default to an empty string value in conditional fields logic. This allows you to show or hide elements when a field is empty or has not been set yet.

1.3.1 – June 12, 2018

Improvements

• Format dates, files and arrays when using data variables.
• Format dates, files and arrays on the submissions overview and submissions details pages.
• Allow cancelling a form’s submit event in JavaScript (with event.stopPropagation()) to prevent form submission.

1.3.0 – May 28, 2018

Fixes

• PHP notice because of namespace import outside of any namespace.
• Removed usage of PHP 5.4+ feature.
• Enforce HTTPS in form preview iframe when WP Admin uses HTTPS but public site does not.

Improvements

• Hook into GDPR Personal Data Export & Erase functionality. Requires WP 4.9.6.
• Allow updating stored Submissions with empty values. Allows clearing out IP address & user agents.
• Internal field should start with underscore to hide it in column view.
• Add for attribute to generated label element. Allows for simple multi-step forms.

Additions

• Add support for button clicks in conditional element logic.

1.2.0 – April 24, 2018

Fixes

• Remove use of short-array syntax, which is only available in PHP 5.4 or later.

Improvements

• You can now hide columns on the submissions tab using screen options (in the top right corner).
• You can now disable saving submissions on a per-form basis.
• Allow pre-checking multiple checkboxes when using the field helper
• Fields with matching URL parameter names will automatically be prefilled.
• Use SVG icon in admin menu.

Additions

• Add simple action for subscribing to Mailchimp. Requires the Mailchimp for WordPress plugin.

1.1.5 – April 9, 2018

Fixes

• Conditionally hidden fields are now ignored in server-side required field validation too. Thanks Jeroen Sormani!

Improvements

• Added foundational stuff for being able to handle file uploads.

Additions

• Added hf_process_form action to execute code before the form actions run.

1.1.4 – March 28, 2018

Fixes

• Ensure form is fully functional in live preview.
• Show all forms on the forms overview page (limit was 5).
• Parse field variables in custom email headers. Thanks Jeroen Sormani!

Improvements

• You can now bind JavaScript events using the default browser API, eg document.getElementById('hf-form-5').addEventListener('hf-success', ..);
• Only load JavaScript file on pages with a form on it.
• Don’t add line-breaks in HTML generated by the Field Builder.
• Conditional elements now accept wildcard values: *
• Available field variables in email action settings are now clickable.

Additions

• Added several action & filter hooks to enable advanced functionality in HTML Forms Premium.

1.1.3 – February 12, 2018

Fixes

• Form preview was not working when WPML was activated.

Improvements

• Improved theme compatibility for the form preview.
• Print submission details as JSON instead of PHP object.
• Form messages are now added to the element as data attributes, so they can be used in JavaScript event callbacks.

Additions

• Conditional logic now accepts multiple values, separated by the |-character.

1.1.2 – January 18, 2018

Fixes

• Conditional elements visible in form preview.
• WP_List_Table issue on forms overview page.

Improvements

• Allow disabling submission storage through a global setting.
• Hide submissions tab when submission storage is disabled.
• Prevent PHP notice if $_SERVER global is missing properties.
• Update JavaScript dependencies.

Additions

• Filter: hf_ignored_field_names

1.1.1 – December 21, 2017

Fixes

• Incorrect role capability for administrators.

1.1 – December 21, 2017

Fixes

• JavaScript error in some older browser when submitting the form.

Improvements

• Use custom user capability base for editing & viewing forms.
• Delay form response until a later hook so other plugins get a chance to hook in.
• Disable client-side validation for conditional fields marked as required.

Additions

• Added live preview to the form editor.

1.0.6 – December 11, 2017

Fixes

• Array replacements in email message were showing “Array” instead of a comma separated list of values.
• Don’t reset form when there are errors. Thanks Jeroen Sormani!

Additions

• You can now use certain template variables in the form content which will be dynamically replaced.
• Added hf_validate_form_{$form_slug} filter hook.
• Added hf_form_{$form_slug}_success action hook.

1.0.5 – November 18, 2017

Fixes

• Could not save more than one “Email” action.

1.0.4 – November 10, 2017

Fixes

• Incompatibility with PHP versions before 5.6.
• Data variables could not be placed on the same line.

Improvements

• Clear output buffer before sending AJAX response to prevent issues with response parsing.

Additions

• Added hf_form_message_{$code} filter hook.

1.0.3 – November 6, 2017

Additions

• Added support for conditional elements by using data-show-if and data-hide-if attributes.

Improvements

• Accept id argument in [hf_form] shortcode.
• Catch errors in shortcode’s slug attribute.
• Allow changing form slug after initial form is saved.

Fixes

• Fixes stylesheet URL when option to load stylesheet is toggled.

1.0.2 – October 30, 2017

Fixes

• Form validation always failing when form has 0 required fields.

Improvements

• Fake success response when honeypot validation fails.
• Validate request by comparing size of POST array with number of form fields.
• Ensure submit button never has label element when using the field helper.
• Optimize URL generation of asset files on frontend.

Additions

• Added hf_validate_form_request_size filter hook.

1.0.1 – October 28, 2017

Improvements
– Added SVG admin menu icon.
– Field names are now sanitized before they are saved in the database.
– Submit button was missing for default form fields.
– Unneeded <form> tags are now stripped from the form before saving.

Additions
– Added data-title and data-slug attributes to the <form> element on the frontend.

1.0 – October 25, 2017

Introducing a first version of HTML Forms, a different approach to forms for WordPress sites.