Adding a form to a page on your site

Building a form and putting it on a page are two separate jobs. A form exists on its own under Forms, and it does not appear anywhere until you place it on a page. The thing you place is a short piece of text called a shortcode, which looks like . Think of it as a marker saying “put form number 1 here”. You do not need to understand it, only to paste it in the right place.

The easy way: let Gravity Forms do it

Gravity Forms can insert the form for you, which saves handling the shortcode at all.

1. Go to Forms and click the form’s name.
2. Click Embed at the top right.
3. Under Add to Existing Content, leave Page selected, choose your page from Select a Page, and click Insert Form.

Placing it on the page

1. In the Embed panel, click Copy Shortcode.
2. Open the page you want the form on and edit it in the builder, the same way you would to change any text. See Editing text on a page if you need a refresher.
3. Find the text element where the form should go, or add a new one in the right spot.
4. Paste the shortcode in on a line of its own, with nothing else around it.
5. Update the page.
6. View the page as a visitor and check the form appears and looks right.
7. Submit it once, for real. Then check the entry arrived under Forms then Entries, and that the email came through.

If you see the shortcode text instead of a form

This is the usual first-attempt problem and it is easy to fix. It means the page printed the marker rather than acting on it. Check, in this order:

• The shortcode is on its own line.
• The square brackets are both there and it has not been cut off mid-paste.
• It has not been pasted into a heading element, which sometimes will not run it. Use a text element.
• The whole thing has not been turned into a link or code-formatted by an editor being helpful.

If it still shows as text, send us the page address and we will place it.

What the bits mean

Making a new page for a form

The Create New section of the Embed panel will make a page and put the form on it in one go. It works, but the page it creates is a blank WordPress page with none of your site’s design applied, so it will look out of place.

Better: create the page the way you normally would, by duplicating an existing one so it inherits your layout, then paste the shortcode in. Creating a new page covers that, and remember to add it to your menu afterwards if people need to find it.

Removing a form from a page

Delete the shortcode from the page and update. That takes the form off that page and nothing else: the form still exists, and every entry it has ever collected is untouched under Forms then Entries. Deleting the shortcode never deletes data.

When to email us instead

• The form appears but looks wrong: cramped, overflowing on mobile, or the wrong fonts and colours. That is styling and it is our job.
• You want the form in a popup, a sidebar, or the footer on every page.
• You want it side by side with something else, like a map or opening hours.
• You pasted the shortcode and got the raw text, and the checks above did not fix it.
• The form needs to go on a page that also takes payments.

Related guides

• Adding or editing a field on a form
• Editing text on a page
• Finding and reading your form entries