The starter shortcode

The fastest way to get a form on a page. Add the shortcode, and OctaForms renders a plain, working form for that slug. No markup or JavaScript from you.

[octa_form slug="contact"]

This is meant as a starting point and a diagnostic tool, not a page builder. The markup is intentionally unstyled so it inherits your theme, and it already includes the bundled helper, so submission and validation work out of the box.

When to use it

• Getting a form live in seconds.
• Checking that a form’s config works end to end on a real page.
• Telling a theme problem apart from a plugin problem. If the shortcode works but your own markup does not, the issue is in your integration.
• Prototyping before you write your own markup.

The context attribute

If the same form appears more than once on a page, add a context label so you can tell the placements apart:

[octa_form slug="contact" context="Hero section"]

Two things happen with that label:

• The form and its fields get predictable, unique id attributes based on it (prefixed with octa-forms- so they never clash with your theme’s IDs).
• The label is recorded with every submission, so you can see which placement a lead came from. Without context, submissions from both copies look identical.

The markup it produces

The rendered form is unstyled but carries stable class names in the octa-forms namespace, so your theme’s CSS can target them. The full list of classes and data attributes is in The JS helper, since the shortcode and the helper produce the same markup.

If JavaScript is off, the form shows a clear <noscript> note. OctaForms requires JavaScript by design: the security token, the retry behaviour and the response handling all assume a JS client.

Moving up

When you want control over the HTML and styling, keep the same slug and switch to writing your own markup with the JS helper. Nothing about the form’s config changes.