Do you want to limit the number of form entries on your WordPress website?
Limiting form entries is useful if you’re running a contest or event that have a cap on the number of participants, want form entries from a specific region, or can’t accept more forms after a particular date.
In this article, we’ll show you how to limit the number of WordPress form entries.
When Should You Limit WordPress Form Entries?
There are many situations where limiting the number of form entries on your WordPress site can be beneficial.
Whether you need to create an event RSVP form with limited seats, to restricting feedback form for registered members only, WordPress forms have the flexibility to limit form entries based on your needs.
Here are few ways that you can restrict WordPress form entries:
Limit total number of form entries allowed – great for RSVP forms or contests / giveaways.
Restrict form submissions by a deadline date – great for scholarship forms, event RSVPs, job application forms, and more.
Restrict form entries to logged-in users only – great for those who have a membership sites or online store.
Limit one WordPress form entry per person – really helpful when creating a feedback form to ensure double feedback aren’t submitted.
Limit WordPress form entries by age verification – really helpful when you need to be in compliance with local laws.
Restrict WordPress form entries by user location or IP address – great for blocking out specific regions or preventing spam.
Depending on your needs, WordPress form plugins give you the flexibility to customize your workflows to save you time.
That said, let’s look at how you can limit form entries in WordPress.
WPForms offers a Form Locker addon that allows you to manage permissions and control who can access your forms. Plus, it lets you set up different types of form entry limits on your website.
Note: you’ll need WPForms Pro because it includes the Form Locker addon. There’s also a WPForms Lite version that you can try for free.
First, you’ll need to download and install the WPForms plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you’ll need to go to WPForms » Settings from your WordPress admin panel and then enter the license key. You can easily find the key in your WPForms account area.
Next, you need to activate the Form Locker addon in WPForms.
Simply head to WPForms » Addons and navigate to the ‘Form Locker Addon.’ Then click the ‘Install Addon’ button.
After that, you’ll need to create a WordPress form.
Simply head over to WPForms » Add New from the WordPress dashboard.
On the next screen, you’ll see the WPForms form builder. Go ahead and enter a name for your form at the top.
Next, you can select from pre-built form templates to get started quickly or use a blank template to start from scratch. For this tutorial, we’ll use the ‘Contest Registration Form’ template.
After that, you can edit your form using the drag and drop form builder.
The form template will have default form fields already in place. However, you can add more fields by simply dragging them from the menu on your left and dropping them onto the template. There are plenty of fields available, including checkboxes, dropdowns, address, phone number, and much more.
You can further edit any form field and set up form entry limits.
For example, let’s say you don’t want the same user to submit multiple forms on your WordPress blog. To create this form limit, simply click the Email field in the form template.
After that, you can click the ‘Advanced’ tab from the menu panel on your left and enable the ‘Require unique answer’ option.
You can do the same for other form fields like name and username. This way, people will be limited to one entry and cannot use the same email or name to submit a form.
Next, go to the ‘Setting’ tab in the form builder and select the ‘Form Locker’ settings.
You’ll see different settings under Form Locker that you can use to limit the number of form entries.
You can enable all of the options if you want. However, we’d recommend enabling 1 or 2 options to limit form entries so it doesn’t hurt the user experience and improves engagement.
Let’s see each of these settings in detail.
1. Limit WordPress Form Entries through Verification
If you enable the ‘Form Verification’ option in the Form Locker settings, you’ll see more options appear.
You can limit form entries by requiring users to enter a password, email, or age. Simply click the Type dropdown menu and select an option.
For example, if you select ‘Age,’ then you can specify how old a user has to be to access the form.
You can set a minimum, maximum, or an exact age verification for your form entries.
2. Add a Start and End Time and Date for Form Entries
Next, you can enable the ‘Form Scheduling’ option.
This will let you add a start time and date along with an end time and date for your form entries.
It’s really helpful if you’re running a time-sensitive campaign.
You can also add a Closed Message that will appear when someone tries to submit a form after the end date and time.
3. Only Allow Logged-In Users to Submit Forms
WPForms also lets you limit form entries to only logged-in users.
Simply enable the ‘Logged in users only’ option. Then add a message that will appear for logged-out users that try to submit the form.
4. Set Total Form Entry Limits and Restrictions
You can limit the total number of forms that can be submitted by enabling the ‘Enable total entry limit’ option.
For example, let’s say you have an order form for your online store and only have 1,000 of an item in stock. Simply enter the number in the Limit field and add a message when the form closes.
Similarly, you can also set up restrictions on your form entries by clicking the ‘Enable user entry limit’ option.
WPForms lets you restrict form entries based on IP address and email address. To set it up, go ahead and click the checkbox for ‘Restrict by IP address’ and ‘Restrict by email address’ options.
Then select an option from the dropdown menu and enter the number of form entries you want to limit.
In our example, we’ve set the limit to 1 per day. You can change this to per week, month, or year.
After you’ve enabled the options you want to use to limit the number of form entries in WordPress, simply click the ‘Save’ button at the top.
Adding Your Form to Your WordPress Website
Now that you’ve created a form, the next step is to add the form to your WordPress website.
The easiest way to do that is to click the ‘Embed’ button in the WPForms form builder. You can also add the form using a shortcode or the WPForms block.
Once you click the button, a popup window will appear asking you to select an existing page or create a new one.
For this tutorial, we’ll click on the ‘Create New Page’ option.
Next, you’ll need to enter a name for your page and click the ‘Let’s Go!’ button.
Next, you’ll see the form in the WordPress content editor, and you can make any final changes you’d like to your form.
After that, preview your page and publish it.
You can also test the WordPress form entry limits you’ve set.
For example, if you’ve set an age restriction on your form and someone doesn’t meet the age limit, then they won’t be able to submit the form.
On the other hand, let’s say you get the total number of form entries that are needed, or it’s past the end date and time for filling out the form.
In such situations, a user will be shown a message when they visit the form landing page.
Do you want to fix the missing Appearance Menu option in the WordPress admin area?
Some WordPress themes may come with support for the full-site editing experience, which changes the options under the Appearance Menu in WordPress admin area.
In this article, we’ll show you how to easily fix the missing appearance menu in WordPress admin area.
What Happened to ‘Appearance Menu’ in WordPress?
WordPress is gradually releasing the full site editing experience which uses blocks to edit all aspects of a WordPress website.
Full site editing allows you to use blocks for theme editing and customization. You can add and edit any part of a theme using blocks, including widgets and menus.
This makes certain items under the Appearance menu redundant, so they’re hidden by default.
This only happens with themes offering the support for the full-site editing. These themes are also called block based themes.
If you are using one such theme, or a default WordPress theme like Twenty Twenty-Two, then your Appearance menu would look different.
How to Fix Missing Menus in WordPress Admin
There are two ways to fix the missing appearance menu in WordPress, so you can create and edit your menus again.
We’ll go through them one by one and you can choose the one that suits you.
1. Use the Navigation Block in Full Site Editor
If you are using a block based WordPress theme with full site editing support, then you cannot access the classic navigation menus screen.
Even if you manually entered the URL for the navigation menu page (e.g. https://ift.tt/u8fQYm4), then you’ll see the following error message.
When using a full site editing theme, you can add, create, and edit navigation menus using the Navigation block under the site editor.
Simply launch the full site editor by visiting Appearance » Editor page.
This will bring you to the site editor interface. You can insert a new Navigation block by clicking on the (+) add block button.
If you already have a navigation block added by your theme, then you can click to select it.
Then simply choose a menu or create a new one.
You can even select previous menus that you have created for your website under the Classic Menus section.
If you are starting with a new empty menu, then you can add items to your navigation menu. You can add links like you normally do in the block editor when writing posts and pages.
Once you are finished, don’t forget to click on the Update button to save your menu and apply it across your WordPress blog.
Full site editing feature is still in the early phases even in WordPress 6.0.
This means that it may behave unexpectedly with different WordPress themes. It may also feel a bit clunky and unfamiliar to many users.
If you want to keep using the classic navigation menus, then you’ll need to switch your WordPress theme to one that doesn’t include the full site editing feature.
Currently many popular WordPress themes don’t support full site editing. However, there is always a chance that they may start using it as it improves over time.
Navigation menus are not the only items disappearing from the Appearance menu. Here are is how you can fix other missing items under the Appearance Menu.
1. Customize
The Customize menu under Appearance used to launch the Theme Customizer. You can still access a limited version of it by visiting the customize.php URL directly:
https://ift.tt/K5xVmD4
Simply enter that URL into your browser and change “example.com” to your own site’s domain name.
You’ll see a notification that your theme supports full site editing. Below that, you’ll find a few basic customization options.
2. Widgets
If your WordPress theme doesn’t have any sidebars or widget areas defined, then you will not see the Widgets menu under Appearance.
Manually accessing the widgets page (e.g. https://ift.tt/bQlEk3M) will show you an error message that your theme is not widget-aware.
On the other hand, if your theme does have widget areas, then you will see a widgets menu, but it will still use the block based widget editor.
WordPress came with a basic file editor that allowed you to edit theme files directly from the WordPress admin area.
We don’t recommend using that editor, but it often came in handy for many beginners when they needed to quickly add a code snippet to their theme’s functions.php file.
The good news is that it is still available, but it is moved under the Tools menu if you are using a full site editing theme.
Are you looking for the best WordPress themes of 2022?
With thousands of free and premium WordPress themes available, it’s hard for beginners to choose the right WordPress theme for their site.
In this article, we will share our expert picks of all the best and most popular WordPress themes of 2022.
The Most Common Traits of All Popular and Best WordPress Themes
WordPress themes are either niche-based or multipurpose in terms of features and options.
You can use a niche-based theme that’s designed especially for your industry, such as a restaurant theme.
Alternatively, you can choose a multipurpose theme that’s highly flexible and can work for any kind of website.
Regardless of the type, all the best WordPress themes have the following features and traits:
Mobile-responsive design: The theme designs are responsive and retina-ready, so your WordPress website looks great on all screen sizes and mobile devices.
SEO optimization: The theme follows the best SEO (search engine optimization) practices, so your website can rank higher in search results.
Page builder support: The theme is compatible with popular WordPress drag and drop page builders. This helps you create custom landing pages whenever you need them.
Speed and performance: Your theme plays an important role in the speed and performance of your website. You should look for themes that are well-designed to keep your site fast.
Customer support: The best themes include documentation and instructions that are easy to follow, are updated often, and are backed by a great support team to help you out if you get stuck.
These are the essential features that you should look for in a theme before selecting it for your website. Every theme in our list comes with many other useful features aside from the main ones that we mentioned above. You can read about these features in their descriptions.
Now that we have discussed the common traits of all popular themes, let’s take a look at our expert pick of the best themes of 2022.
Divi is one of the most popular WordPress themes and is owned by Elegant Themes. It includes an ultimate page builder. It has multiple visual elements and modules that help you create a beautiful website.
The theme comes with hundreds of free ready-made layouts for multiple industries and niches. The 1-click demo importer lets you import professionally designed pages and blog layouts to get started quickly. You can then replace the content with your own using the frontend editor.
With the built-in drag and drop page builder, you can move elements, save and manage custom designs, and use global styles on all your website pages. You can easily add testimonials, too.
Divi gives you complete control of the layout design, inline text editing, and custom CSS on your site. It’s highly flexible and easy to use. Plus, it’s SEO friendly to help your site rank well in Google and other search engines.
Elegant Themes offers great customer support if you have any problems with the theme.
Astra is a modern WordPress theme designed to create any website. It works with all the popular drag and drop page builders seamlessly.
The theme comes with several starter sites that you can use to launch your website quickly. These ready-made websites are perfect for small businesses, startups, blogs, and WooCommerce stores.
Astra has tons of amazing features, including page headers, mega menu, multiple layout choices, Google Fonts, unlimited color customization options, separate blog page layouts, and custom widgets.
Plus, Astra offers powerful integration with the WooCommerce plugin to create an online store. Their WooCommerce theme includes infinite scrolling, quick product view, shop page, product gallery, and cart options.
It also integrates with popular learning management systems like LearnDash. Astra has built-in SEO optimization to help your website rank well in Google and other search engines.
SeedProd is the best WordPress website builder on the market. It lets you design your custom theme layout with a visual drag and drop builder, without writing code.
SeedProd comes with several professionally-designed theme templates. These templates include all the page layouts that you need for your website, as well as high-converting landing pages. They can be used as-is, or completely customized to suit your needs.
You can use the SeedProd page builder to customize the layout and design of all of your theme pages. It shows a real-time preview of all the changes, so you can see how your website will appear to users before it’s even published.
Besides the theme builder, it also offers coming soon and maintenance mode templates. When you’re making your website, you can enable the coming soon page to engage your users and grow your email list.
SeedProd’s visual builder is powerful yet beginner-friendly. Whether you want to design a custom landing page or a complete website, it’s easy to set up with the drag and drop option.
Ultra is a powerful multipurpose WordPress theme built to help you easily make a website. It comes with dozens of ready-made sites for niches such as lifestyle, magazines, restaurants, photography, fashion, and more.
It also includes the Themify page builder that you can use for customization. Ultra has several builder addons to add advanced elements like progress bars, counters, pricing tables, an audio player, and more.
Other notable features include smart layout options, color choices, crisp typography, section-based scrolling, image filters, and portfolio options.
Ultra is also a perfect theme to start an online store as it has full WooCommerce compatibility. It’s easy to set up and customize your site with the live WordPress theme customizer.
OceanWP is a free responsive WordPress theme. It comes with a 1-click demo content importer and hundreds of ready-made sites to launch a website instantly.
The theme has multiple extensions to add features to your website like a login popup, an Instagram feed, a sticky footer, a featured posts slider, and more. It’s translation ready to create a multilingual website.
The OceanWP theme supports WooCommerce out of the box. It has built-in SEO features to help improve your website rankings.
Breakthrough Pro is a minimalist WordPress theme. It’s built on top of the Genesis Framework by StudioPress which makes it powerful and robust.
The theme is ideal for any business website. It comes with 9 custom widgets, 3 layout options, landing page templates, and a custom header. It works with the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg editor) to customize posts and pages smoothly.
Hestia Pro is a modern multipurpose WordPress theme that’s optimized for speed. It has both one-page and multi-page layouts to make any type of website.
With a slick design, Hestia Pro lets you showcase your business and services professionally. It integrates with popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, Visual Composer, and more.
Hestia Pro is fully compatible with WooCommerce, and it allows you to create beautiful products and shop pages easily. It also ships with multiple starter sites for eCommerce stores and other business niches.
Nozama is a WordPress WooCommerce theme built to start an online store quickly. It’s highly customizable to display your featured products on the homepage.
It comes with a built-in storefront to create product filters, custom product layouts, and more. Other features include social media integrations, color customization, and header visibility.
Eclipse is an advanced WordPress photography and personal blog theme. It’s well-suited for photographers, bloggers, and authors.
The theme comes with a featured slideshow, widgetized columns, Instagram image carousel, ad placement spaces, and more. It’s beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Sydney Pro is a fantastic WordPress multipurpose theme. It uses the custom Elementor blocks for a carousel slider, pricing tables, and a timeline.
Other notable features include page templates, header choices, customizer options, and a video header. The theme is translation ready and allows you to create a multilingual website easily.
Storefront is a high-quality and popular WordPress WooCommerce theme. It comes with an intuitive and flexible layout to create an online store.
It works with all WooCommerce extensions seamlessly. The theme is fully customizable for background, colors, and font using the WordPress customizer that shows your changes in real-time.
Inspiro is a stylish WordPress theme. It comes with a fullscreen video background slideshow that supports YouTube, Vimeo, and custom videos.
The theme is perfect for a portfolio, small business, or eCommerce website. It ships with a gallery module to display your images, videos, and work portfolio beautifully.
Neve is a modern WordPress multipurpose theme designed to create all kinds of websites easily. It’s highly flexible and easy to use.
This theme is compatible with popular page builders, including the Divi website builder, Beaver Builder, and more. Neve also supports the WordPress block editor to customize your pages and posts.
Authority Pro is a powerful WordPress theme. It’s built with a multipurpose approach to let you create any professional business website or online store.
The theme is highly scalable and works equally well for small to large business websites. It supports the WPForms plugin to create a contact form or any other form quickly.
News Portal is a free WordPress magazine theme. It has a widgetized layout and multiple ready-made magazine templates to launch your online magazine instantly.
It comes with multiple color schemes, category color options, background colors, and more. The theme is easy to set up and manage with the WordPress live customizer. Plus, you can easily add widgets and shortcodes to the widget areas.
News Portal is also retina ready and uses responsive design, meaning your site will look great on all devices.
Shoptimizer is a fast WordPress WooCommerce ready theme. It comes with multiple features to set up and grow your eCommerce store quickly.
The theme has a beautiful layout, custom header, featured content section, cart options, a wishlist, and more. It’s optimized for SEO and speed performance. Plus, it’s designed to boost conversions.
Gema is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for photographers, personal bloggers, authors, lifestyle, and fashion websites.
It comes with a custom logo, a classic navigation menu, buttons, post layouts, and a style manager. The Gema theme is beginner-friendly and easy to set up.
Tusant is a unique WordPress podcast theme well-suited for musicians, bands, podcasters, vlogs, and any audio or video streaming website.
It allows you to embed videos and audios from multiple sources. The theme has several layout choices, crisp typography, and custom background color. You can also use the drag and drop page builders for customization.
Saved is a WordPress church theme ideally built for non-profits, churches, and fundraising websites. It comes with a built-in homepage builder to set up your website’s homepage quickly.
It comes with a Church Content plugin that lets you add sermons, staff profiles, events, and locations. Other useful functionality includes custom page templates, sticky menu, font choices, color schemes, and more.
Didi is a WordPress theme designed specifically for fashion, lifestyle, and wellness blogs. It comes with a white background that makes your content stand out.
It offers multiple layout choices, custom page templates, sidebar layouts, and video support. The Didi theme is compatible with WPML to create a multilingual website.
Travel Way is a modern WordPress theme ideally built for travelers, travel bloggers, and travel photographers.
It features a fullscreen custom header background with call-to-action buttons, social icons, logo, navigation menu, and other details. The theme has multiple sections to display your favorite locations beautifully.
Fitness is an elegant WordPress theme beautifully crafted for personal trainers, gyms, yoga instructors, and any health-related business.
It allows you to create custom pages for trainers and fitness classes, such as online yoga classes. With the 1-click demo content importer, you can import a ready-made website and get started quickly.
Foodica is a modern WordPress theme for food bloggers, food critics, chefs, and food recipe websites. It comes with a minimalist layout and 10 color schemes.
On the homepage, Foodica has a beautiful featured slider, featured recipes section, multiple ad placement spaces, and more. The theme integrates with WooCommerce to start an online food delivery service quickly.
Kale Pro is a premium WordPress food blog theme. It has a beautiful layout that you can also use to create a lifestyle blog, a fashion website, or an online magazine.
It features recipe index templates to showcase your recipes stylishly. Other features include a sticky navigation menu, an image slider, custom fonts, color schemes, and a background image.
Kea is a WordPress hotel theme designed for hotels, resorts, BnBs, and accommodation businesses. It offers a fullscreen image background on the homepage.
Kea allows you to integrate a reservation and booking service to manage your online bookings easily. The theme supports a fullscreen video or carousel slideshow to display your hotel rooms, lobby, and services.
Elite is a creative WordPress fullscreen theme packed with tons of features that you can use to launch a powerful eCommerce store. It allows you to showcase your products in beautiful image galleries and increase your sales.
It comes with image and video galleries, a custom logo option, Google Fonts, page layouts, and more. The Elite theme is easy to set up using the WordPress customizer with a live preview.
Essence Pro is a beautiful WordPress theme designed specifically for health, wellness, and lifestyle niches. It features an eye-catching fullwidth custom header image to create a powerful first impression.
The theme is built on top of the Genesis Framework, which makes it rock solid and robust. It ships with the Atomic Blocks and WPForms plugin to help you get started quickly.
Other notable features include 6 layout options, custom widget areas, landing pages, and more. It’s translation ready and supports WooCommerce out of the box.
Panoramic is a free WordPress multipurpose theme to create any website. It has a minimal layout with a simple and clean design that makes a great first impression on your visitors.
The theme integrates seamlessly with popular WordPress plugins like WPForms, SiteOrigin’s page builder, and WooCommerce. It comes with a homepage slider and flexible theme options that you can manage using the WordPress live customizer.
Agama is a free WordPress theme designed specifically for digital agencies, corporate businesses, photographers, freelancers, and portfolio websites.
It has a white background with a beautiful color selection for fonts, links, and buttons. The theme is SEO-ready and compatible with the WPML plugin to translate your website easily.
Silk is a modern WordPress fashion blog theme. It comes with an attractive layout and a featured content slider on the homepage.
With this theme, you get an Instagram feed display, social tools, custom post layouts, an image slider, and a mega menu. It has color choices, animations, fonts, and custom backgrounds.
Blockchain is a crypto business WordPress theme. It’s ideally built for financial traders, investors, advisors, and consultants.
The theme includes cryptocurrency exchange tables, post types, unlimited color schemes, custom widgets, and more. It fully supports drag and drop page builder plugins and the WordPress WooCommerce plugin.
