How forms and signups work on my site
Every name and email a visitor offers you is someone asking to hear from you — the most valuable thing a website collects. This page is the map of how that works on a bernard site: what forms exist, where their submissions go, and the choices you have.
The three places a form can deliver
Every form on your site is wired to exactly one destination, and knowing which is the whole game:
- Your people list on this site (the default). Submissions become contacts in Where do the people who buy, join or ask end up? territory — you're emailed on each one, their answers and consent are stored, and welcome emails can follow automatically. Nothing external to set up.
- Your mailing provider. The form delivers straight to a form in your ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or similar account, so your existing lists, tags and automations behave exactly as they always have. See Connect a form to ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp or my email provider.
- Nowhere — a broken form. Common after a move from WordPress, where the form's machinery stayed behind: it looks fine and swallows every signup silently. See My signup forms stopped working after the move — and ask for a form health check any time; every form on every page gets classified in one pass.
The kinds of form
A form is one of four kinds: waitlist, lead capture, registration, or
enquiry — see Capture leads with a signup form for adding one. Every form asks for an email
(that's how duplicate signups merge); anything else — name, phone, a question box —
is up to you. Forms can carry a label (say, glazing-guide) so signups from
different funnels stay separate audiences for later emails.
Two things a form deliberately cannot do: mark someone as a buyer or student (those are earned by a purchase, never claimable through a public form), and carry a pre-ticked consent box (consent needs a real affirmative act — the box always starts unticked, and the wording shown is stored as evidence).
What happens after a submission
For forms wired to your list: the contact appears with their answers, you get a notification email, and if you've set one up, a welcome email goes out in your voice. For forms wired to a provider: whatever your provider is configured to do — its automations, its thank-you page or a redirect you set there. Either way, spam protection and rate limits guard the public endpoint.
As with everything, changes to forms happen on a draft you preview and approve before they're live.
The prompt
“Show me every form on my site and tell me where each one sends its signups — my own list, my mailing provider, or nowhere. Flag anything broken.”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Connect bernard to your AI over MCP — a one-time setup in bernard → your site → Use your own AI — then paste the prompt above.
Questions people ask
- Where do form submissions go?
- By default, straight into your people list on this site — each signup appears as a contact with what they typed and what they agreed to, and you get an email for every submission. A form can instead deliver to your mailing provider (ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp and the like) so your existing automations fire; see the wiring guide for that.
- What kinds of form can I have?
- Four: a waitlist ('tell me when it opens'), a lead capture ('send me the guide'), an event registration, and a general enquiry form. What a form can't do is mark someone as a buyer or a student — those come only from a real purchase, so nobody can forge a customer record through a public form.
- How does consent work?
- A marketing-consent checkbox always starts unticked — the visitor must tick it themselves, and the exact wording they saw is stored with their record as evidence. A form physically cannot be created with the box pre-ticked; that isn't lawful on a form, and it's deliberately impossible rather than merely discouraged.
- Do form changes go live immediately?
- No. Adding, rewiring or removing a form lands on a draft with a preview link, and nothing changes on your live site until you approve it.