4.14 Troubleshooting
If you require any assistance, or if the issue you’re having is not covered here, don’t hesitate to contact our 24/7 live support.
Regardless of the issue you may be having, here are some of the most common causes:
Cache Interfering
Cache is often the cause of any of the issues outlined in the chapters below..
If your form or form fields (like e-Signature) are not appearing or functioning as expected, ensure all caches have been cleared from any cache plugins, from your theme, from your server, and from Cloudflare (if applicable).
Try enabling the Load form using Ajax and Prevent page caching on form pages options under Behavior > Rendering.
Plugin, Theme or Code Conflicting
The cause of any issue could also be your active theme, or some other active plugin or custom code conflicting with Forminator.
You’ll want to perform a conflict test to try to pinpoint the source of the conflict.
Browser Errors or Conflicts
Check for any errors in your browser’s developer tools, and disable any browser addons/extensions that may be conflicting.
Quite often, error messages will clearly indicate the issue. Contact support if you need help interpreting the results.
4.14.1 Form not Appearing
Form Not Appearing for Logged-Out Visitors
If the form is showing for logged-in users but not logged-out users, and you want it to show for all, ensure the Enable logged in submission only is disabled in Behavior > Security
Custom CSS Interfering
Added CSS may be hiding the form or conflicting with Forminator’s CSS. Check if any relevant custom CSS has been added to the form’s Custom CSS area, in the theme’s settings or stylesheet, the Customizer, or any other custom CSS plugin.
Optimization Plugin Incorrectly Configured
If you are using Hummingbird, you can test the page where your form should appear with no cache or asset optimization by adding the parameter ?nocache=1&avoid-minify=true to the URL (e.g. https://yoursite.com/form-page/?nocache=1&avoid-minify=true). If the form loads with the parameter, you’ll know the issue is related to some asset being optimized when it shouldn’t be.
If you are using the Manual option in Hummingbird’s Asset Optimization module, some required assets may have been inadvertently deferred or moved to the footer. Check your browser’s console to ensure that jQuery/JS assets are loading correctly, and there are no errors related to jQuery not loading.
If you are not using Hummingbird, check relevant options in whichever optimizer plugin you are using, and any relevant custom functions as well.
Incomplete Loading of the Form
In your browser’s developer tools, check if you see display: none; set for the main form container. If you do see that, do not try to force the form to display using CSS to override that.
The reason is that Forminator will keep the form hidden until all the javascript needed for the form has loaded, then will automatically remove that CSS rule so your form displays as it should. So if you do see display: none; in there, it means your theme or some other plugin or code is interfering and preventing Forminator JS from loading properly.
In this case, you’ll want to perform a conflict test to try to pinpoint the source of the conflict.
4.14.2 Form Data not Sent to GTM
By default, form submissions don’t trigger a submit event when the Ajax submission method is used.
When the submission method is set to Page reload, a submit event is triggered. But this may not send the required field information, and may even send some irrelevant form HTML data.
To accurately track form submissions in Google Tag Manager when using either submission method, we recommend enabling the relevant Forminator Integrations in our Beehive plugin. See the Settings (Tag Manager) chapter in the Beehive documentation for details.
However, if you are using the Ajax submission method and don’t want another plugin just to track submissions in GTM, you can use the following custom code instead.
Use it as a mu-plugin or add it to your child theme’s functions.php file. Note that you should already have the tag manager scripts installed on your site to use this option.
<?php | |
add_action(‘wp_footer’, ‘wpmudev_add_ga_event_submission’, 9999); | |
function wpmudev_add_ga_event_submission(){ | |
global $post; | |
if ( is_a( $post, ‘WP_Post’ ) && !has_shortcode($post->post_content, ‘forminator_form’) ) { | |
return; | |
} | |
?> | |
<script type=”text/javascript”> | |
jQuery(function($){ | |
$(document).on( ‘forminator:form:submit:success’, function(e, formData) { | |
dataLayer.push({event: “formsuccess”, formData: formData}); | |
}); | |
$(document).on( ‘forminator:form:submit:failed’, function() { | |
dataLayer.push({event: “formfailed”}); | |
}); | |
}); | |
</script> | |
<?php | |
} |
4.14.3 Fields not Appearing
Incorrect or Conflicting Visibility Conditions
A frequent cause of fields not appearing as expected in your form is incorrect or conflicting Visibility conditions. So you’ll want to first double-check that any condition(s) you have set for your field are correct and not conflicting.
Custom CSS Interfering
Check if any custom CSS has been added to the form’s Custom CSS area, in the theme’s settings or stylesheet, the Customizer, or any other custom CSS plugin. Added CSS may be hiding the field or conflicting with Forminator’s CSS.
4.14.4 Form Submission Fails
Error Message – Something went wrong
“Something went wrong” is the default message that appears when the Akismet plugin detects a spam submission.
If form submission fails and you see that message appear instead of the expected success message, check if you have enabled the Akismet spam protection option under Behavior > Security in your form’s settings.
If that is enabled, try changing the default message to something else and test the form submission again. If you then see your custom message, you’ll know the cause is Akismet.
Unfortunately, Akismet only provides Forminator with a simple pass or fail flag, and there are no options to adjust the level of spam detection.
So if Akismet is flagging legitimate form submissions as spam, the recommended solution is to disable the Akismet Spam Protection option & instead use either a CAPTCHA field and/or enable Honeypot Protection.
4.14.5 Add-ons not Working
Geolocation
If you are getting errors when trying to activate the Geolocation Add-on, please log into your Google Maps Platform and ensure that the following APIs are enabled.
- Places API – Required for auto-suggesting 5 address options based on what is entered in the relevant field.
- Maps JavaScript API – Required to display maps & markers.
- Geocoding API – Required to convert latitude and longitude to an address.
4.14.6 Integrations not Working
If an Integration is not sending data to the corresponding app, first check for error messages in the Submissions for the corresponding form. Opening a submission will show you if the upload to an app failed, and a possible cause.
Double-check that your Integration is correctly configured, and that any mapping of form fields to app fields is also correctly set up and that data meets the app’s fields requirements (e.g. length, date format, type).
If needed, you can get additional information in your debug.log file by adding the following defines to wp-config.php (be sure that WP_DEBUG is set to true):
define(‘FORMINATOR_DEBUG’, true);
define(‘FORMINATOR_ADDON_DEBUG’, true);
4.14.7 PayPal not Working
Enable the Debug Mode option in PayPal field > Advanced settings and check the browser console for any PayPal-specific errors.
Most often, the error message will clearly indicate the issue. Contact support if you need help interpreting the results.
4.14.8 reCAPTCHA not Working
This is usually due to a conflict with the theme and/or some other active plugin also calling Google reCAPTCHA assets. In this case, you’ll want to perform a conflict test to try to pinpoint the source of the conflict.
You may want to try hCaptcha as an alternative to reCAPTCHA.
4.14.9 Form Emails not Sending
Are Default Emails Sending?
You’ll first want to determine if default WordPress email is working correctly. To do that, enable the Email Logs module in Branda Pro, or use any other similar plugin that logs emails sent from your site. Then double-check that default WordPress emails are sending as they should.
An easy way to check that would be to click the Lost password link on the login form for a test user. Check the email logs in the plugin you’re using to ensure the password-reset email has been sent, and see if you get that email in your test user’s inbox.
If default emails are being received in your inbox (not the spam folder), proceed with additional checks below. If default emails are not being sent at all, then the issue is not specifically with Forminator, and you may want to contact support for more in-depth troubleshooting.
SMTP Not Configured
If SMTP is not yet configured on your site, we highly recommend doing so. SMTP resolves most deliverability issues out of the box.
In the meantime, you can enable WP_DEBUG in your site’s wp-config.php file, and check the debug.log file for any clues.
SMTP Configured
If SMTP is already configured on your site and default emails are sending as expected, check the email logs in Branda (or any other similar logging plugin you may be using).
If the logs indicate that Forminator is not sending emails, there is likely a conflict with your active theme, plugins or some custom code. You’ll want to perform a conflict test to try to pinpoint the source of the conflict.
If the logs indicate that Forminator is sending emails, check the error messages to see why they are not sending correctly.
4.14.10 Custom “From Email” Setting Not Working
Forminator allows you to change the From Email address for any email notification under the Advanced tab of the notification.
However, if you have configured SMTP on your site, this setting cannot override the from email address set there and may cause errors. Also, some hosts and email services force a from email address that cannot be overridden by any means. Still others do not allow non-verified email addresses to be used in the From Email field.
The recommended method in situations like this is to leave the From Email address field empty in the Advanced settings because the address configured in the SMTP settings (or by the /host/email service) will be used regardless.
Instead, add the relevant email field tag (like {email-1}) to the Reply-to Email field in the notification’s Advanced settings.
In this way, when you reply to an email notification, the reply will be addressed to the Reply-to Email address provided in the submission.