As a website administrator or owner who uses WordPress, you might have multiple reasons to expire form submissions.
Whether you’re responsible for data privacy and compliance in your organization or simply interested in optimizing your website’s performance and efficiency, understanding how to manage form submission data is crucial.
The Ninja Forms plugin offers free access to form submissions and a feature to auto-delete your form submission data for free without the need for an additional plugin. Without further ado, let’s dig in!
Table of contents
- Benefits of setting submissions to expire in WordPress
- How to auto-delete form submissions with Ninja Forms
Benefits of setting submissions to expire in WordPress
Before we will show you how to expire your WordPress submission entries, let’s dive into some compelling reasons why submission expiration should be on your radar for your WordPress website.
Data privacy
If you are collecting data that contains sensitive or personal data (PII), storing your submissions indefinitely may pose a data privacy risk. By setting submissions to expire after a certain period, you can ensure compliance with data protection regulations. You also have the option to disable storing your submissions in your WordPress database.
Data storage
Naturally, the number of submissions you collect through your forms grows over time and your WordPress database size can increase significantly. Outdated submissions can clutter your database and affect your website performance and load times. If you automatically delete your form submissions, you streamline your process to keep your database efficient and clean.
Tip: Instead of storing your submissions in the WordPress database, you can also send your submissions to Google Sheets which has been gaining big popularity especially now that more people are communicating asynchronously.
Maintenance and cleanup
Cleaning up old form submissions manually can be very time-consuming and prone to human error. By automating the deletion process, you save valuable time and effort, allowing you to focus on more important aspects of website management.
Relevant and fresh data
Depending on the nature of your website or business, you might want to work with the most current data. Expiring submissions ensure that you are always working with relevant and up-to-date information to shape your business strategy.
Legal regulatory requirements
Some industries or countries such as EU countries have specific retention policies or legal requirements for data storage. Setting form submissions to expire aligns with these regulations and helps you stay GDPR compliant.
How to auto-delete form submissions with Ninja Forms
Expiring submissions in WordPress is a very easy task with our core plugin. All it takes is pressing one button and setting the number of days the form entry should be deleted.
This free feature can be found under the Record Submission action. When this action is enabled, your form data automatically saves in the WordPress database and you can view this data under Submissions in your Ninja Forms dashboard.
To set submissions to expire, navigate to Record Submission action > Advanced > SET SUBMISSIONS TO EXPIRE.
This is where the magic happens. Just toggle on “Set Submissions to Expire” and enter the number of days you want the submissions to be trashed. The minimum value is one day, but there is no maximum limit.
Keep in mind that this setting affects all existing and new form submissions. It also trashes the form submission record only. The files uploaded to your form would persist.
Managing form submission data with Ninja Forms is easy!
Managing form submission data with Ninja Forms is incredibly easy and efficient. Our contact form plugin offers a user-friendly interface that allows you to effortlessly collect, organize, and analyze data using our export features.
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, Ninja Forms streamlines the process, saving you time and effort in handling form submissions.
Want to learn more about WordPress submissions? Make sure to check our in-depth guide All You Need to Know About WordPress Form Submissions or learn how Ninja Forms process your form submission data in our blog post How Ninja Forms Handle WordPress Submission Data.
