How to Embed Public Forms on Your Website

There are three ways to get a public form in front of people: link to it, print a QR code for it, or embed it in your own website. Which ones are available depends on the form.

Embedding: the Public Email Form

Three things in Argenta can be placed inside your own site: the Public Email Form, a Calendar Hub booking page (click Embed beside an event type on the calendar's Event Types page), and a petition's sign form (Embed On Your Website on the petition's Thank You & Sharing tab). The rest of this section is about the Public Email Form. On its design page, the Share This Form section gives you:

• Your Website Address(es): the site or sites allowed to host the form
• Embed Email Opt-In Control on Your Website: the snippet to paste into your page

1. Enter your website address first
2. Copy the embed snippet
3. Paste it into your site where you want the sign-up to appear
4. Load your own page and check the form appears and submits

Step one is not paperwork. The embed only loads on the sites you list, so a snippet pasted onto a site you have not entered will not appear.

Linking to a Form

Every public form has its own address. Copy it and use it in an email, a social post or a button on your site. A plain link works everywhere and needs nothing from your web developer.

The address on a share card is a short link, and the card tells you how many times it has been opened and when it was last used.

QR Codes

The donation, event, campaign, auction and volunteer task group form designers each carry a share card with the form's Public Link, a Copy button, and a QR code available as Download PNG or Download SVG. Use the QR code on printed material, signage and table cards, where somebody cannot click a link. Signed waivers, shared files and petitions have the same card, headed Scan To Sign, Share This File and, on a petition's Thank You & Sharing tab, Petition Link And QR Code.

Use the PNG for everyday printing and the SVG for anything large, like a banner or a poster, because it stays sharp at any size.

You can turn a short link off from the same card. Do that and everyone using it stops getting through, and that includes every QR code you have already printed. Turning it back on restores them. While it is off, the card itself switches to the form's full address, so anything you copy or download from it then still works.

Choosing Between Them

• Embed when you want people to sign up without leaving your site, which today means the email opt-in
• Link for email, social media and anything you send
• QR code for anything printed or on a screen in a room

Best Practices

• Always open the finished result yourself, on a phone as well as a computer
• Test a QR code with an actual phone camera before it goes to print
• Leave a link on once it is printed, since turning it off makes every printed code dead
• Send people to the form directly rather than to a page that explains where the form is