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Getting started

You need nothing but a WordPress site you can log in to as an administrator. There is no account to create, no license key to enter and nothing to configure before your first form is live.

Install LocalForm​

LocalForm is in the WordPress plugin directory, so you can install it without leaving your site.

  1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add Plugin.
  2. Type LocalForm in the search box.
  3. On the LocalForm card, click Install Now, then Activate.

A LocalForm menu appears in the admin sidebar. That is the whole setup.

LocalForm needs WordPress 6.9 or newer and PHP 8.1 or newer. Almost every host meets this already - if you are not sure, Tools → Site Health tells you, and your host can update either one for you.

Adding Pro​

LocalForm Pro is the paid add-on, and it comes to you as a zip file rather than through the plugin directory. Install the free plugin first (Pro needs it), then:

  1. Go to Plugins → Add Plugin → Upload Plugin.
  2. Choose the localform-pro zip you received and click Install Now.
  3. Click Activate.

The Pro features appear inside the same screens you already use - there is no separate menu to learn.

Your first form​

  1. Go to LocalForm → Add New.
  2. Give the form a title. The web address is filled in for you from the title, and you can change it.
  3. Add your questions with the + button or the floating toolbar - text, email, phone, dropdown, single choice, number, checkbox, date, and static text or images to explain things along the way. See field types for the full list, including sections, which split a long form into steps.
  4. Mark the questions people must answer as Required, and drag the cards to put them in the order you want.
  5. Set the form to Published (or leave it as Draft while you work on it) and click Save Form.

The form builder, with a title, a question, and the floating add-question toolbar

Saving gives the form its own page on your site, by default under /forms/ - for example /forms/my-event/. The Preview button in the top bar shows you exactly what visitors will see.

If the form page shows a "not found" error, check Settings → Permalinks and pick anything other than "Plain", then save. WordPress needs that to give your form its own address.

The Design panel (the palette icon in the top bar) sets the colors and font, and the rest of the per-form options - tags, custom fields, anti-spam - are covered in form settings.

Formatting your text​

Everywhere you write more than a line of text for visitors to read, you get a small formatting toolbar: bold, italic, a link, bulleted and numbered lists, and a button that clears formatting again.

It appears on:

  • the form description, under the title on the canvas - its toolbar stays out of the way until you click into the text;
  • the success message and the closed message, in the form's General panel;
  • Text Block, Section and Consent content - see field types;
  • the default success message and the footer content, under LocalForm → Settings.

To add a link, select the words it should cover and click the link button; type or paste the address in the row that appears and press Apply. Leave the address empty (or click Remove) to take an existing link off again. Pasted text arrives without its original formatting, so copying from a Word document or another web page will not drag a stylesheet in with it.

The confirmation email has no toolbar: LocalForm sends plain-text email, so its message is written as plain text - see emails.

What visitors see​

The Preview button in the builder's toolbar answers this without leaving the screen. It swaps the questions you are editing for the page a visitor gets - your colours, your font, your logo and the step-by-step navigation - including edits you have not saved yet. Nothing you fill in there is sent or stored, and Desktop / Mobile switch the width. Press Escape, or the button again, to go back to editing.

A form that is closed, full, not open yet or still a draft previews as its questions anyway, with a line above the frame saying what visitors would be seeing instead.

A published form page, with the event card, a progress bar, and questions

After someone submits, LocalForm shows the thank-you message you wrote, right next to the form:

The configured success message shown after submitting

After someone registers​

  • Every answer is stored on your own site under LocalForm → Responses, with a summary per question and an Excel export - see responses.
  • Get an email each time someone submits, and send them a confirmation - see emails.
  • Send each submission on to another system automatically with webhooks.

The Forms list, with tags, submission counts, and status

Setting up something specific​

The rest of this documentation describes each screen on its own. If you have a whole job in front of you rather than a setting to look up, the guides follow one from beginning to end: