Getting started - How to create your first form

Visforms is a component, which you will find in the backend components menu. Select components->Visforms from the dropdown menu of the Joomla! Administrator Panel.

Visforms matches the logical structure of HTML forms and is structured into major sections

• Forms
• Fields (HTML controls)

There is no "fields" tab/menu item in backend, because fields are always linked to a form. You have to create a form, before you can create fields.

The form

Click the "New" button in Visforms toolbar to create a new form.

Each form has two required settings. The title, is used as form header. The name is used in URL's - like an "alias" - , if you have enabled "searchengine friendly URL's" for your Joomla! website. This is, why you cannot use whitespace or special characters in "name".

Please enter the required settings. After that you can save the form and use it.

There are lots of other options which you can use to set up forms individually. Each option is explained in detail in the backend. Just hover the label of an option with your mouse and you will see the description. Furthermore you can find information on the purpose of many of the options and their proper use when you read our detailed articles about important aspects of Visforms in this documentation.

Fields

You can add fields to your form, as soon as you have saved the form. Click the fields button, which is now available in the forms button toolbar. This will open the fields list view (Visforms - fields).

Click the "New" button in fields list view toolbar to create a new field.

Each field has three required settings. The Label, used as field label, the name used as n unique alias and the type that determines which kind of form field you create. As the name is used in the database it cannot contain whitespace or special characters.

Further field options depend on your field type selection and will be available after you selected the field type. They can be used to customize the field. But only fields of type checkbox, checkbox group, select or radio button have further required settings. Other field types can be saved without further settings.

Please enter the required field settings and save the field.

The submit button

The submit button is a field of type submit button, which you have to create by yourself as described above. The fields Label is used as button text which allows you to create buttons with custom text.

Publish form

There are to native ways to publish a form

• Create a menu item
• Create a Visforms module

Create a menu item

Go to the menu manager and create a new menu item. Choose visforms -> form as menu item type and select a form in the modal window that pops up when you click on Choose a form. Enable the menu option Show Page Heading if you want to show the form's title as page heading. The form will also use the Metadata options Meta Description and Meta Keywords from the menu options.

Publish a form in a module position

Create a new module of type Visforms in Extensions -> Modules, use the Choose a form option to select a form and publish the module. You can enable the module option Show Title to show the form title.

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