Is your form stuck on processing and does not submit? In this troubleshooting tutorial, we will walk you through how to pinpoint what could go wrong in the first place.
But that’s not all. We’ll also address the question, “Does Ninja Forms support submitting forms without refreshing the page?” and cover some important facts about submitting forms and storing submissions with Ninja Forms. Let’s begin!
Table of contents
- Submitting forms with the Ninja Forms plugin
- Does Ninja Forms support submitting forms without refreshing the page?
- Factors that slow down the submission process
- Troubleshooting Ninja Forms stuck on Processing
1. Submitting forms with the Ninja Forms plugin
Before we show you how to troubleshoot your form stuck on processing, let’s discuss submitting forms using the Ninja Forms plugin.
A call-to-action button is mandatory
To submit your WordPress forms successfully, it is necessary to add a Submit button (CTA) to your form. Without this form field, your forms will not be submitted. You can also customize the text of the Submit button label.
Additionally, before a user receives the Success message confirming their form was submitted successfully, you have the option to customize the label displayed during the processing phase.
By default, when the user clicks the Submit button, the label will change to “Processing”. You can also rename this processing label to something that better suits your needs.
Record Submission action must be enabled to store submissions on your site
If you want to store received submission data on your website (your servers in WordPress), enable the Record Submission action.
When you enable the Record Submission action, all data collected in your forms exist only on your local server in your WordPress database unless you have set it up to be sent elsewhere, such as through an email action or third-party integration (e.g. Salesforce, Mailchimp, Zapier, etc).
The Ninja Forms plugin does not collect user information and no data from your submissions is stored on our servers. To learn more about submission data processing, check our blog post How Ninja Forms Handle WordPress Submission Data.
2. Does Ninja Forms support submitting forms without refreshing the page?
Yes, of course! The Ninja Forms plugin supports AJAX submissions which stands for Asynchronous Javascript And Xml.
In plain human-speak, AJAX means that when a user submits a form, the data is sent to the server in the background without the need for the entire page to reload.
Instead, the user can immediately receive feedback after hitting the submit button such as the “Thank You” message or an indication that their submission is being processed.
As users don’t have to wait for the entire page to refresh, it makes the submission process faster, which can be especially helpful on slower connections or pages with a lot of content. The AJAX submissions enhance user experience and improve the speed and responsiveness of your site.
3. Factors that slow down the submission process
Did you know there are things you can do to prevent issues with processing your forms? There are many factors, that can add to the processing load of your forms and cause the issue of forms stuck on processing.
To minimize the risk of issues with processing your forms, keep things simple and be mindful of the following:
Number of actions
Each action tied to a form submission, such as sending emails, redirecting to a different URL, or triggering third-party integrations, adds to the processing load.
Multiple or redundant actions can significantly slow down the submission process, so make sure your form contains only the necessary actions.
A large number of fields
Forms with a large number of fields require more data to be processed, which can slow down the submission, especially if these fields include file uploads or complex inputs like calculations.
Try to prioritize which fields are truly necessary and eliminate any fields that don’t add significant value.
To reduce the number of fields, you can use dropdown menus or radio buttons to simplify choices, combine related fields, or use the Repeaters to create a group of fields when necessary. You can also use conditional logic to show/hide fields based on the user input on your form.
Complex conditional logic
Regardless of the form builder used, if your form uses complex conditional logic to show or hide fields, a large number of products, or complex calculations are involved, the form loading speed may be affected. This slowdown is primarily due to the processing required to handle significant data and perform calculations.
Large file uploads
If you allow file uploads on your WordPress forms, especially large files, the upload process can add significant time to the overall form submissions.
We recommend our users send files to external cloud services instead of saving files to the server and Media library. This way you can use the background image upload with our File Uploads add-on and bypass server settings to reduce processing load.
Server performance
The server’s capability to handle requests can directly affect the speed of form processing. If the server is under heavy load or not optimized, even simple forms can take longer to process. Choose your server and hosting wisely if you are planning to build complex forms.
4. Troubleshooting Ninja Forms stuck on Processing
Before we look at how to fix your form stuck on processing, it is worth mentioning what things can add to a processing load of your forms.
If your form does not want to process, it might be caused by a caching issue. This typically involves problems caused by how caching mechanisms store and deliver content.
To resolve the caching issue, clear your browser and server-side (plugin) cache and then re-test the form. If this issue still persists, make sure all out-of-date plugins and themes have been updated.
Still no success? Install the Health Check plugin (Tools > Site Health > Troubleshooting) and enable troubleshooting mode while only activating the Ninja Form plugins.
If the form is submitted without an issue, a plugin or theme conflict is happening. To rule out the source enable each plugin one at a time until the form no longer submits and that would be the culprit.
For plugin or theme conflicts, we recommend reaching out to the developer of that plugin or theme for further assistance. Unfortunately, troubleshooting conflicts originating from other plugins or themes are outside the scope of support we can provide.
If you are not able to identify the cause of the issue, make sure to reach out to our support and provide temporary admin credentials so we can investigate this issue further on your site.
Need customer support? We are here to help!
We encourage you to contact our technical support if you need assistance troubleshooting your WordPress forms. Whether you are a paid Ninja Forms customer or a free core plugin user, you can always count on our support.
If you prefer a DIY approach to solving WordPress issues, check out our tutorial on Troubleshooting Ninja Forms: 5 Common Issues, or contact our support if you have any questions!
