Written by Admin on 2025-05-06

How to Create a Signup Form and Download a CSV File in WordPress

If you're running a website, chances are you want people to sign up for something—whether that's a newsletter, exclusive content, or access to an online course. And when people do sign up, you want to be able to keep track of their information easily. One simple way to do this is by creating a signup form on your WordPress site, then downloading the information as a CSV file. Here's how to do it.

Step 1: Choose a Plugin

There are several WordPress plugins that allow you to create custom forms—some of the most popular include Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7, WPForms, and Ninja Forms. For this tutorial, we'll be using Contact Form 7 because it's free and easy to use.

Step 2: Install and Activate the Plugin

To install Contact Form 7, simply go to the "Plugins" section of your WordPress dashboard, click "Add New," and search for "Contact Form 7." Install and activate the plugin.

Step 3: Create a Signup Form

Once you have the plugin activated, you'll see a new "Contact" menu item in your dashboard. Click on "Contact Forms," then "Add New." This will give you a blank form to work with. You can customize the fields to include whatever information you want to collect from people who sign up. By default, Contact Form 7 will include fields for name, email address, subject, and message.

Step 4: Add a Field for Opt-In

If you want people to explicitly opt-in to your newsletter or other communications, you'll need to include a checkbox field for them to check. To do this, add a new field to your form and select "Checkboxes" from the dropdown menu. Add a label for the field (e.g. "Sign me up for the newsletter"), then add the actual checkbox by typing [checkbox checkbox-123 ""] into the "Form" tab. Be sure to replace "checkbox-123" with a unique ID for your field.

Step 5: Configure the Form Settings

Before you can start using your signup form, you'll need to configure some settings. Click on the "Mail" tab to specify the email address you want form submissions to go to, and customize the subject and message body if desired. Then, click on the "Messages" tab to customize the message that appears when someone submits the form.

Step 6: Add the Form to Your Site

Once you've created and configured your form, you'll need to add it to your site. To do this, go to the page where you want the form to appear, then add the shortcode [contact-form-7 id="123" title="Signup Form"] to the text editor. Be sure to replace "123" with the ID of your form, and "Signup Form" with whatever you want to call the form.

Step 7: Download the CSV File

Finally, when people start signing up for your form, you'll want to be able to download that information to keep track of it. To do this, go to the "Contact" menu in your dashboard, click on "Contact Forms," then click on the name of the form you created. You should see a tab labelled "Export." Click on that tab, then select the fields you want to include in the CSV file, and click "Export."

And that's it! By following these steps, you should be able to create a custom signup form on your WordPress site and easily download the information as a CSV file.