 I think of forms in four different groups. There's a contact form, there's an intake form, there's a subscription form, and there's a free opt-in offer form. A lot of people use that as their lead generation item. So here I'm going to use my site as an example, and here is my free opt-in form or my lead generation form. Here is my subscriber, subscription form, here is my contact form, you can contact me down here on my form, and here is my intake form. This is actually really complicated, long, long, long, long, long, done form. These forms are available, you can make any of these forms with the Caldera Forms contact form maker that we're going to make. If you're going to use Caldera Forms out of the box as a subscription form, I happen to work with MailChimp, so they have a MailChimp add-on Caldera Forms for the basic plug-in is free, but the add-on for MailChimp is actually an extra cost. So one of the things about forms is that the forms are actually really easy to do, but once you get the form on it and somebody fills out the form, then where does that go? So that's the secret to forms is making sure that that information actually gets to you, and that's where people have issues with forms. Making the blocks, yeah, it's not really hard, but it's making sure that your vital information from your lead is going to get to you. And we're going to talk about a contact form, which is not necessarily a lead generation form, it can be, but it's not necessarily, so you have to think about your business and how you're going to generate leads on your business, and if the contact form on a contact page is appropriate, or if the front page, a front page form is appropriate instead, because we put contact forms on a specific page, contact page. You can also put them in your blog, on your blog sidebar, along with your subscription form. Put them in your footer, you can put the contact form in your footer on your site, I don't do that, I have a contact form page. So if everybody will get out their computers and go to the Caldera forms area, I feel like everybody get their hymnals, go to page 232. So when you just click on the forms, this is what you're going to come up to, and we're going to click on new form, and see, they give you all these really cool templates. So actually making the form is super easy, there's a job application form, there's a booking form, there's a ratings form, event registration, it's really cool, but all the stuff that they have. So I'm going to create the contact form, and the form name, I'm going to name it with my page name, so this is going to be contact, and then just click create forms. And just like magic, there it is. So if we go preview this form, this is what it's going to look like. Okay, so to me, this is super annoying how large this is. That is, the other thing that's super annoying is that I have first name, last name, and then email address all the way over here. I want my email address to be stacked. Yeah, it just is huge. So I'm going to go do some styling really quick on the form. I'm going to take off this, your details, completely, I'm going to just delete it. Because I have, how can we help, what do I need, your details? It's kind of redundant. And then I'm going to move this email address underneath, and this is just a drag and drop editor. So you just click on it, and drag it over. I'm also going to delete this blank that I have over here. And you can see that now we're not, like, balanced. This is a, the first name is a third, and the last name is two-thirds. So I'm going to actually move this over. And you can see, you just move, you just drag and drop. These, this form is awesome, because you can do everything here, and it's just drag and drop, it's wonderful. So now if we save the form first, and then preview the form, it's so much better. Let's see how we can help, it's still huge and contact form is not as large. So over here is a duplicator button, so if I clicked on this, it's going to duplicate that, how we can help area. And if you click on that pencil, it's going to allow you, please be nice to me. Oh, they're popped up on this side. So it's going to allow you to do some changes this way. And I know that an H2 code is a heading code. So I'm actually going to drop this down to an H4 because I cheated and I did this before and the H3 is not that much smaller than the H2. So I'm going to save the form again. Why are you not saving now? Okay, so you're extra. And this just needs to be gotten rid of. And where's the X? Let's put it in this area down here. And then when we, no, go in the plus down here. It's going to say delete, thank you. You can see this is not my usual form maker. But this is a friend of ours who's very near and dear to LA WordPress meetups. This is his form, so that's why we're using his form. So now if we go preview the form, see this is more appropriate sized. Excellent, so now that's the contact form. So you would think, oh, I'm all done. No, you just started, that was the easy part. So now you're going to go to email. So you don't necessarily want this to be from Caldera form's notification, because if you have more than one form on your site, you won't know which form is giving you the notification. So the from name, I always make it the name of the form. And if I have more than one contact form, like if I put them in the footer or in the sidebar on the blog, I actually use, I make different contact forms and I see where they, what page they're on when they fill out that contact form. And that seems a little bit anal retentive, and yes, probably is. But then I also know if they came from my services page, then I know what they wanted. Then I have a clue as to what they were thinking of when they contacted me. All right, so the reply to email address, see how there's no reply to. So actually, this would never go anywhere, it would just stay in the site. So this is my work email address, so I'm going to move it from email to reply to. And then I'm going to put my personal email into the from email. And here's the reason why I'm using two different email addresses. If you send two in from the same email address, you have a like, you're more likely to end up in the spam filter. So I always use two different, and nobody but me is going to see these, that's why I use my personal. I am not going to email any of the other recipients, but I do have clients that do have more than one recipient, so I CC them here. And the email subject is going to be contact form. And I know that that's going to be the contact form on the contact page. And then this summary is everything that the person fills out on that page is going to go into this summary area. So if I wanted it to have some header or some additional information, I can go in here and type, have the summary in here also, and I could type, sorry, my trackpad died. I can add stuff, notes for me in there, and then send it through. All right, and then go up and save the form. And now you're going to get an email when somebody fills out the form on your contact page. But what are they going to get? Are they going to get something nice when they fill out the form? Or are they going to get, thanks, see you later? Because a lot of times you get this odd language. So we're going to go to processors, autoresponder, which is weird that they call it processors, but that's what they call it. And it's going to be, here's what they're going to get in an email. They're going to get from the pedal pusher, from an email address. The subject is, thank you for contacting us. And it says, hi, it's actually going to put the recipient's name. Thanks for your email. We'll get back to you as soon as possible. Here's a summary of your message. That's good to do because I actually just needed, I contacted somebody for some repair work and I needed a copy of what I had sent them. So that's really good to do. The other two is, we'll get back to you as soon as possible. Yeah, we'll get back to you within one business day. Give them something concrete so that they know and so they know that you haven't forgotten them. And then make sure you go check your emails to get them. All right, so now that one's saved. And basically, everything else up here, you can add anti-spam. And one of the plugins that the DreamHose guy suggested was to do a capture, I think, so have a capture on your site. So you can add the anti-spam here or you can use a capture on your site, a capture plugin to add on. Here are the add-ins, add-ons. Brigitte, do you know how much longer I have? Okay. Oh, dude, that was quick. Okay, anybody have questions about forms? Sorry, I wasn't going to go into subscription forms, but we actually have the time, so. Here's the plugin for Caldera forms, the MailChimp form. Basically, you're going to, it's a paid form, a paid plugin. So you're going to have to purchase it. You go to add-ons and then go to Caldera forms for MailChimp. So I only use MailChimp, but when I'm doing subscription forms, I have a free plugin that I use. It's called MailMunch, M-A-I-L-M-U-N-C-H. And it makes awesome forms for that connect MailChimp and your site. I thought this was going to take a lot longer, I'm sorry. So let's talk a little bit why you need contact forms and what is the difference between a contact form and a lead generation form, because they're not the same. A contact form is so somebody can get to you. And usually that's not when somebody is interested in buying from you. Usually that's a different kind of form. And usually people don't contact you the very first time they go to your site. If they're interested and tell you that they're interested in buying from you, that's rare that on the first time when they're to your site, they're gonna buy from you. So usually what you try to do is get them on your email list so over time you can educate them about your services or products and get them on board with using you as their provider or as where they're gonna buy their products from. So one of the best ways to get somebody on your email list is to give them something of value for free. The easiest thing for you guys, for us as providers is to do a free e-book. And any industry can do a free e-book. If you're selling, okay, I had a client. He did porta-potties for event centers. He didn't do porta-potties like for that you could just run a porta-potties. It was event centers, so a fair. He would take out and not just like one porta-pottie, he would take out a whole thing where it was like 20 bathrooms. And that's all he did was hold huge, huge, big porta-potties. And when he came to us, he was like, no, there's nothing free that I could give away. Heck yes. Most people don't even know what exists in that realm and how it actually can help them to have that temporary space instead of having permanent, but the cost differences are, we built a 20 page, a 20 page e-book about porta-potties. It was so much fun to write. It was actually really interesting. I didn't know you could do all that stuff. They had like dog wash stations, which is like great, if you're going to a county fair, you need a station where you can wash all the dogs, all the pigs, all the horses. You need that, it was very interesting. So this form, if you can see, you guys have a big image on the top of your site. I put it right underneath that big image. So it's not in people's faces going, it's all about me, you need to sign up for my stuff. But it's a nice suggestion. I have something there for them to download that a lot of people, in my experience, people come to me for this item. So that's why I chose that item. I get a lot of questions on this item over and over and over again. So that's why I chose this item to write my free e-book about. And this is actually a super easy form. It's an email address, and a name, and a button, super easy form. And you could do this in caldera forms and not hook it up to MailChimp if you wanted to go into your site all the time or get that email back from your site all the time and import into your email. Not everybody's gonna use MailChimp. So like a Weber, you could import them into a Weber and there's add-ons for a Weber. There's add-ons for every constant contact, a Weber, whatever you use, there's a add-on form for it. But the subscription forms, again, you're just gonna go to new forms and it's gonna be basically a contact form but we're gonna take off everything else. We're gonna name it subscription form and then create the form. And on a subscription form, it's different than a contact form. You want the least amount of info that you can get by with. So first name, maybe, and email address. Email address is required. First name doesn't need to be required. People don't like giving you information. They don't wanna. I got that a lot with my, I stayed at my grand, my daughter's last night, my granddaughter kept on saying don't wanna, don't wanna. She's almost two. So we're gonna delete all of these, delete, delete. And we're gonna bring this one down underneath. So we're gonna have first name, email address and then we're gonna change this from send message and a lot of people will have the word submit and submit is problematic. Most people will not, no, a lot of people won't do not like pressing a submit but it has connotations of that you're being submissive so they don't like the word submit. So one of the things that I do with the free opt-in offer is I always put send it to me. If you make it a phrase instead of like subscribe or submit, if you make it a phrase and you make it a little bit fun, I always put send it to me with the exclamation point. People are more likely to click that button. I don't know why they just are. It's just kind of weird. All right, so now we're gonna save this form. And now we need to go add these forms to the site. Oh, look, we have two buttons. So how did we get two buttons? Why isn't that deleting? All right, well hopefully it doesn't show up and I don't wanna take a lot of time deleting it when it's being problematic. All right, so now this contact form, this is the preview of the contact form but on this site, I don't have the pages up but on the site, we actually don't have the contact form on the page yet. That's just a preview of the form itself. So when you put the contact pages on the form, you're gonna go to pages. This is super hard. See how really hard it is. Pages, click inside the editor. See this button that says Caldera forms? Contact form, insert form. But okay. And did you see that actually on here, it says set as a modal. Modals are very cool and that's a good thing for subscription forms because what modals do is they actually pop up like on a white background. So they have a little bit of action to the form. So it's a little bit more interesting form. But a contact form you don't want as a modal. It needs to be on your page. Your contact form needs to be boring. It needs to be predictable and it needs to be reliable. So now if we went to this page and viewed it, it actually looks like our preview. Same thing with the subscription form that we made. Let's go back one. You guys made a blog post page, right? I don't think I have a blog post page. So here's what we're gonna do with the subscription form. We're gonna make it a sidebar subscription form. So you're gonna go into appearance, then widgets and right here is a Caldera form widget. It's already done. So awesome. And we're gonna bring it over to that sidebar. It's gonna populate itself. I am not gonna put a title on it. I'm just gonna put a, oh yeah, I am. Cause I don't know what it's gonna look like yet. No, I'm not. I'm not gonna put a title on it because I'm gonna have a free opt-in offer. So I'm going to go down here and get this text widget. Carry it up above the Caldera form. And then that's where I'm gonna put, and I'm gonna put a little bit of styling on it. It doesn't give me a lot of styling, does it? So I'm gonna save it. Now, if we go into pages, let's go see if it's on the contact page because I don't have a blog post page. All right, there it is. And that looks a little funky. So if I would go back and I would put this on the widget header instead of the way, there's too much space in there. And obviously fix that so it only has one button. And then the other thing too is you really wanna make your buttons different colors if you can. Some of the other form makers make it super easy to do that. The form maker that I use Mailmunch for MailChimp makes it really easy to do that. And a lot of that can be fed through the theme. The theme that I use has a default coloring. And so all my buttons are the same color. So it kinda depends on your theme. My theme isn't flushed out like everybody's because I only have one. All right, that's it.