Creating a New Form

Adding a New Form

You can begin a new form from either Add New in the WordPress dashboard menu under Ninja Forms, or in your Ninja Forms Dashboard.

image highlighting both methods of adding a new forms: Add New in the WordPress dahsboard menu under Ninja Forms, and the Add New button on the Ninja Forms dashboard screen
There is a premade Contact Me form if you just want to get a basic contact form up and running fast.

Start With a Blank Form or a Template

Once you’ve clicked Add New in either location, you’ll be able to choose to start from a blank form or one of the premade templates.

image of the add new form screen presenting options to begin with a blank form or one of many available templates such as Contact Us, Collect Feedback, Event Registration, General Enquiry, and others. At the bottom of the image is a header titled "Additional Templates"

If you choose to begin with a template, you’ll start out with much of the form already configured for you. Beginning with a blank form starts you out with an almost completely clean slate.

Templates beneath the Additional Templates header are available but require a Ninja Forms add-on to use. These templates involve extended functionality like the ability to connect to email marketing services, create user registration forms, payment forms, and more.

Customizing Your New Form

Form Fields

Adding Fields

Once you’ve made your selection on starting fresh or from a template, the Ninja Forms builder will open. You’ll find yourself on the Form Fields tab of the builder with the Fields Drawer open. A blank form has been selected in this example.

Ninja Forms field drawer

Fields can be added, edited, and removed here. Either click on any field to add it, or drag and drop from the window to the builder space. When you drag and drop into the space, you’ll see a green line appear. Wherever the green line is, that’s where your field will fall when you let go of it.

When you first begin a form, the Field Drawer opens for you automatically. Anytime you want to add a new field, you’ll need to either click the + Add new field at the top middle of the form builder or the little plus symbol, +, at the bottom right of the screen.

adding a new field to the form

Editing Fields

All form fields have settings that can be edited to your preferences. Clicking directly on any field in the builder will open the setting window. Here we’ve clicked on the First Name field and changed its Label to say Name. You can see the change reflected in the builder.

changing of field label

I want to make my email field required, so here I’ve clicked on the Email field and toggled on the Required Field setting. You can see the change reflected in the builder by the red asterisk that appears.

form required fields

Deleting Fields

With the First Name field being changed to just Name, I no longer want the Last Name field on the form. When you hover over any field, you’ll see a gear icon appear.

image demonstrating hovering over a field with the input device. A gear icon has appeared in the upper right hand corner of the field in the builder.

Hovering over the gear icon expands it to show three options:

  1. Gear icon – opens the field settings window
  2. Trash icon – deletes the field
  3. Copy icon – duplicates the field
image demonstrating that hovering over the gear icon of a field expands it to offer additional options

You can click the Trash icon to delete this field.

A full list of form fields and their individual settings can be found in our Field Types documentation.

Emails and Actions

The Emails and Actions tab is where all form actions can be added, edited, and removed.

image of the Emails and Actions screen with the navigation tab to get there highlighted (Emails and Actions at the top of the screen), default actions already enabled on the form, and the icon to add new actions

Form actions are things that happen when the form submits. For example:

  • Sending an email notification
  • Displaying a success message
  • Redirecting the submitter to a new page

Every new form by default has an active Success Message, Admin Email (email sent to the website’s WordPress admin email address), and a Record Submission action.

Any action can be turned off by switching the green toggle off.

Do no turn off Record Submission unless you do not want to collect submissions for this form.

Each action can be edited by clicking on it just like you did with fields above. A settings window will slide out from the right.

New actions can be added by clicking the Add New Action button located above the list of actions. The Action Window will slide out from the right.

For a full list of actions and what each of them does in detail, please see the Emails & Actions section of our main documentation page.

Advanced Settings

Clicking on the Advanced tab of the form builder takes you to the Advanced Settings screen.

image of the Advanced settings screen with the Advanced tab navigation option you take to get there highlighted (at the top left of the screen). The settings on the page are divided into two categories with available settings at the top and Additional Settings at the bottom. There settings are greyed out to indicate that the necessary add-on required to use them is not active.

The three settings at the top of the page are available in Ninja Forms core:

When one of these settings is selected a control panel will slide out from the right just like for fields and actions. Full details for each are on their own documentation pages, linked above.

Settings found under Additional Settings are available but require a Ninja Forms add-on to use. These settings involve extended functionality like the ability to add logic to form fields and actions, form styling options, and more. 

Saving Your New Form

image of the Ninja Forms builder with the Publish button highlighted at the top right corner of the screen

At the top right of every screen of the form builder is a blue button labeled Publish. This button does not publish the form in the way WordPress posts and pages publish to the live website. This button will save your form. Once saved, it will appear in the list of forms in the Ninja Forms dashboard. You can return to the form at any time. If a form is already added to your site, clicking the Publish button will make the changes live.

Previewing Your New Form

To see how your form will look once it’s included to a post or page, click Preview Changes at the top of the form builder.

image of the Ninja Forms builder with the Preview Changes option highlighted at the top of the screen next to the Advanced tab

This will generate a temporary visual of a new page with only your form on it. The appearance of the page and the form will be determined by the theme that you are using for your site. You can interact with the form here to test it out.

Publishing and/or Sharing a Form

Once you’re finished with your new form, it can be either added to a post or page, or shared via a live Public Link. For details on how, please see the documentation for either/both methods:

Once you have published your form, to get back to your WordPress dashboard, click the X in the top right-hand corner.

exiting the form builder using the X in the top right-hand corner

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