How to Create a Form for Your Anonymous Posting Site

Do you want to allow submissions on your anonymous posting site?

Some blogs allow authors to submit their content anonymously for publication. Authors who prefer this method might want to keep their content anonymous due to work or because it’s an opinion or essay that falls outside their typical content.

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If you want to accept user-generated content, or UGC, for your anonymous posting site, all you need is a good submission form. Fortunately, we can help with that. Forms are kind of our thing, after all.

How to Create a Form for Your Anonymous Posting Site

I’m going to show you how you can create a form to accept anonymous blog submissions. Even better, you’ll have it up and running in a matter of minutes. Before we get into it, though, I want you to understand the importance of vetting your anonymous content.

Yes, anonymous content is great for protecting user privacy. It might be more in line with your site niche. But just because it’s anonymously submitted doesn’t mean you should publish it unchecked. Always do your due diligence to make sure you’re receiving original, well-written content that follows guidelines that you set.

Ok, with that said, here we go!

Step 1: Create a WordPress Form

So the first thing you’ll need to do is install and activate the WPForms plugin. For more details, see this step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin in WordPress. Please note that to follow along with this tutorial, you’ll need to use the Post Submissions addon, which requires a Pro license or above.

Next, you’ll need to install and activate the Post Submissions addon so users can submit blog posts on your website.

To do this, go to WPForms » Addon and find the one labeled Post Submissions.

Now, click Install Addon if prompted, and then use the toggle switch to Activate.

This addon is required to accept post submissions, so definitely don’t skip this step!

Once you’ve installed the Post Submissions addon, it’s time to create a form to embed on your website to accept the submissions.

This might seem a little intimidating but don’t worry. I’m going to show you how you can make it a lot easier.

First, go to WPForms » Add New and name your form. Then choose the Blog Post Submission Form template.

Using a template makes it stupid simple to get started. Plus, all of our templates are 100% customizable, so you can use this one as-is, or you can use it as a base and modify it to make it exactly what you need.

See how easy that was? I told you not to worry! 🙂

Now that you have the template loaded up in the form editor, there are 2 sections that I want to call to your attention.

The first is the Author Details section. This includes name, email, and author bio fields.

The second one is the Create a Blog Post section, which includes post title, post content, featured image, post excerpt, and category fields. This is the section where users will add their content.

Take note that the Post Content area in the template is a Rich Text field. That means that when users are submitting their content, they can add formatting so that the text displays as they intend it to when it’s published.

The Post Content area in the template will not accept media uploads, such as images, by default. If you wish to allow users to also submit images, you need to enable that in the field settings.

You can also add additional fields by dragging them from the left hand panel into the form editor.

If you add a new field, don’t forget to click on it to make any changes, such as changing the label or the field size. You can also click on a form field and drag it to rearrange the order on your post submission form.

And if you want to learn more about how to customize your blog post submissions form, check out this article outlining how to allow users to submit blog posts on your WordPress website. You’ll also find tips in our guide to accepting posts for an event calendar.

Step 2: Enable Anonymous Guest Posting & Allow Post Submissions

Getting that set up was pretty easy, right? Before you save the changes you’ve made to your blog post submissions form, you need to enable anonymous guest posting.

To do this, click on the Name form field in the form editor. The field options will open on the left-hand side. Find the switch labeled Required and toggle it off.

By doing this, you’ll let anyone submit your blog post submission form on your website without having to fill out the name form field.

If you want to increase the amount of anonymity, you can also remove the requirement on the Email and Short Author Bio fields. This is completely up to you. Just remember that if you need to get in touch with an author, even if their name isn’t submitted, you might want to have a way to contact them.

Before we wrap up the form-building process, take a quick look through the form settings and make any updates you see fit.

After clicking Settings in the form builder’s side navigation, you’ll see a range of settings you can adjust. How many you see depends on how many addons you’ve installed. They might include:

• General Settings: Here you can change things like your form’s name, description, and submit button copy.
• Spam Protection & Security: No one likes or wants spam. WPForms makes it easy to protect your forms and keep your site secure from unwanted form submissions. Here you can set up a number of anti-spam measures, including filters and tools like hCaptcha, Google reCAPTCHA, Cloudflare Turnstile, and Custom Captcha.
• Form Confirmations: Form confirmations are messages that display to site visitors once they submit a blog post for your website. WPForms has three confirmation types to choose from: Message, Show Page, and Redirect. To choose more than one form confirmation at a time, check out this helpful tutorial on how to create multiple form confirmations.
• Form Notifications: Notifications are a great way to send an email whenever a form is submitted on your website. A notification will automatically send to your once a form is submitted on your site. You can also send one to the site visitor that submitted the form and anyone else that needs to be notified of a form submission. To learn how to do this, read here about creating multiple form notifications.

Remember, if you want to send anything to a user’s email address, the email needs to be entered on the form. You shouldn’t remove that requirement if you intend to send confirmations or notifications by email.

This is a good time to save your work. Once you’ve made any necessary adjustments to the required fields and all of your settings, click Save at the top of the form builder.

Enabling Post Submissions

As you were looking through the basic settings for your form, did you notice that Post Submissions was an option? After you’ve configured the basic settings for your form, you’ll also need to check on those Post Submissions settings. This will ensure the post submission settings are correct to allow anonymous guest post submissions on your blog.

First, go to Settings » Post Submissions and make sure the Enable Post Submissions option is toggled on.

Next, make sure all the dropdown menu items match up to the form field title found above each dropdown menu. If you changed or added any new form fields, you’ll need to match them up with the corresponding fields for your posts.

• Title: the title of the blog post.
• Content: the main body of the blog post.
• Excerpt: a short summary of the blog post.
• Featured Image: the image added to the beginning of the blog post.
• Type: options include Posts or Pages, but can include custom post types as well.
• Status: the status you want each blog post to be in when submitted. You can automatically publish all post submissions or require approval before publishing posts to your website.
• Author: choose an author for the blog post.

At the bottom of this screen, you’ll see a section called Custom Post Meta. This lets you map fields on your guest post submission form to custom fields in WordPress. If you’d like to try it out, check out our tutorial on using custom fields in user-submitted posts.

We’re heading into the home stretch now! Your form is complete and you’re ready to embed it on your website. Go ahead and save your progress again before we move on to the final step.

Step 3: Add Your Form to Your Site

After you’ve created your blog post submissions form, you need to add it to your WordPress website.

WPForms allows you to add your forms to many locations on your website, including your blog posts, pages, and even sidebar widgets. There are even several options for embedding a form on your website. For this tutorial, I’m going to embed the form using the embed button in the form editor.

If you just saved your form at the end of the last step, you’re probably looking right at the embed button. Go ahead and give that a click.

A modal window will appear. You can choose whether to embed your form on an existing page or create a new one. If you already have a page set up, you can choose the existing option and select the page where you want the form to appear.

I’m going to create a new page for my form, so I’ll select that option.

As soon as I select that option, another modal asks me to name my new page.

Note: If you opted to embed on an existing page, you’ll be prompted to choose from your existing pages here instead.

After adding a name for the page, click on the Let’s Go! button.

Your page will open with the embed displayed in the page editor. If your page is new, you can take this opportunity to create some additional content for the page, such as content guidelines or other helpful info.

If you’re embedding on an existing page, take a minute to preview and make any needed page adjustments.

When you’re ready, you can Publish your new page or Update your existing page to make the form go live on your site.

To view your WordPress anonymous guest posting form entries after they’ve been submitted, check out this complete guide to form entries. Also, if you want to see where people are submitting from, check out the Geolocation addon.

Create Your Anonymous Posting Form Now

Next, Get More Post Submissions for Your Blog

And there you have it! You now know how to enable anonymous guest posting on your blog.

To get more content on your blog, see our tips on how to get more guest post submissions. You can also get sponsored posts by requiring payment for post submissions.

So, what are you waiting for? Get started with the most powerful WordPress forms plugin today.

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