Recommended for websites with contact forms. This plugin allows you to create forms and insert them in your pages, posts, or sidebar. You can have a variety of form fields, from text boxes to drop-downs to upload buttons. The results are stored in WordPress, and optionally mailed to you and/or the email address listed in the form.
Once you activate Gravity Forms, you can add, edit, and manage your forms in the Forms menu of WordPress. This menu should appear near the bottom of the first set of menu buttons, below the Comments menu. Editing is somewhat self-explanatory, and there are detailed help pop-ups (just mouse over the question mark icons).
Creating Forms
To create a new form, go to the Forms > New Form menu. To edit the Form name, description, and other details, such as the confirmation message, click on the text “Untitled Form” or the sample text below it. You can also hover over the area and click Edit. To add new form fields, use the buttons in the panels on the right hand side. New fields will be added to the bottom of the form, and you can drag and drop them to put them in the order you desire.
To insert a form in a page or post, you must first create the form through the Forms menu. Then, when you go to the page/post editor, you will notice a new “Add Gravity Form” icon (it’s usually the last icon next to “Upload/Insert.” This will insert a properly configured shortcode into your page or post, based on your selections in the pop-up.
You can also insert a Gravity Form as a widget, if you want to put a form in your sidebar or other widget-ready area. The widget name is “Form.”
Storing and Sending Form Data
All form info is automatically stored in the menu Forms > Entries. This shows only the first form’s entries by default. To see the entries for another form, you will need to select that form from the drop-down. You can also go to the Forms > Edit Forms menu, hover over the desired form, and click Entries. You can delete entries if you like.
In order to get an automatically-generated email whenever a form is submitted, you must edit that form’s Notifications. On the Edit Forms page, mouse over the form you want to change. Go to the first section, “Notification to Administrator.” Typically, you want to select “Enable email notification to administrators.” Enter your email address, make your subject line indicative of a web form (so you can distinguish these messages from other emails), and you typically want to select “All Submitted Fields” under “Message.” This ensures that all of the data from the form is included in the email that is sent.
You can also send an automatically-generated email to the person filling out the form, provided you require them to enter their email address in the form. This is done in the “Notification to User” section. You can include some or all of the form data, or just write a standard message.
For more information, see the plugin page(s):
http://www.gravityforms.com/