Taking registrations or RSVPs for an event? Let people give you their info online using the contact form on your website!

In WordPress, there are several contact form plug-ins that allow you to build an online form where people can send you an email without you having to expose your email address. Some of these plug-ins are free (for example, Contact Form 7) and some of them are paid (for example, Gravity Forms).

All of these plug-ins allow you to have more than one contact form on your website, and for you to build fairly complex forms that include things like checkboxes and radio buttons. Checkboxes allow you to choose more than one option; radio buttons require you to select only one option.

All of these contact form plug-ins will generate an email to you (or to any email address you designate–or multiple email addresses) with some or all of the information that is submitted by the user. All of these plug-ins can also be configured to save the submitted information in the database of your WordPress website. Gravity Forms does this natively, while Contact Form 7 and other free plug-ins require an additional helper plug-in for this capability. When information has been stored in your database, it can then be exported in a CSV file, which can be opened and edited in Excel.

This can greatly simplify the management of your registrations and RSVPs, even for fairly small events. The exported Excel file can quickly give you totals (for example, the number of vegetarian meals needed), and make it easy to email all of the registrants at once.

If you are in an ACWP participant, you may need to contact us to turn on access to Gravity Forms for you. We can train you in how to build forms and/or export data, or you may find that it is fairly low-cost to have us build forms for you.