AFB – Auto Form Builder: Drag & Drop Contact Forms, Multi-Step Forms, Conditional Logic & AI

Changelog

1.6.1

• New: Conversational Forms: an Appearance tab on each form’s Configure screen, with a live preview that uses no AI credits:
  • Style: Light, Dark, Transparent or “Match my form” (takes the colors, corner radius and font from the form’s Customize settings), plus your own colors for the window, header, bubbles, accent and border. A warning shows when a text color is too close to its background to read. A transparent chat embedded on another site lets that site’s background show through.
  • Text: the system font, your page’s font or one of about 100 Google fonts, and the text size. A Google font loads only on pages that show that chat.
  • Shape and size: corner radius, bubble style, shadow, border, height, maximum width, and full height on phones.
  • Header: show or hide it, an avatar (dot, initials or a Media Library image), a name and subtitle, and the “Start over” button and progress bar.
  • Input and motion: placeholder, label, a text send button, the typing indicator and the fade-in of new messages. Visitors who prefer reduced motion see no animation.
  • Layout: show the chat in the page or as a floating button in a bottom corner, with its own color, icon and an optional teaser message. The floating chat starts only when opened. One floating chat shows per page; others, and chats embedded on other sites, show in the page.
  • Custom CSS for one chat, limited to that chat. Only users who may post unfiltered HTML (usually administrators) can change it; imports, scripts and other unsafe code are refused.
• Fix: Conversational Forms: the chat no longer picks up common theme styles, such as a theme’s serif font or the hidden “Your message” label showing next to the input.
• New: Webhooks and ad tracking:
  • Several webhooks: send each submission to more than one place, for example your CRM and Zapier. Each webhook has its own name, address, on/off switch, signing secret, forms and last delivery result, and can be tested, duplicated or deleted on its own. Your existing webhook becomes the first one and keeps sending exactly the same data.
  • Your own JSON: instead of the standard data, a webhook can send JSON you write, for example for the Meta Conversions API (a ready-made example is included). Use tags for the answers (the same ones as in emails) and for the submission: event ID, time, page, referrer, visitor IP and browser, form. Change values with |trim, |lower, |nospace, |e164 (phone number with country code), |sha256 (hashed, as ad platforms require) and |number. “Validate & preview” shows the result with sample values. A template with mistakes cannot be saved, and a visitor’s answer can never break the JSON.
  • Background sending: webhooks are sent after the visitor’s page has loaded, so a slow service never delays a submission. A delivery that fails for a temporary reason is retried 5 times over about 8 hours, and the Webhooks screen warns you when deliveries failed. Each request has an X-AFB-Delivery-ID header that stays the same on retries, so the receiving service can skip duplicates. The copy of a submission kept for delivery is removed as soon as the delivery succeeds, fails for good or is cancelled.
  • “Never send to webhooks”: a setting on each field in the form builder. That answer, its label and its options are never sent by any webhook. Emails and other integrations are unchanged.
  • Ad Tracking add-on (free, off by default): remembers ad click IDs (fbclid, gclid, gbraid, wbraid, msclkid) and UTM parameters of a visitor’s first visit, last visit and last ad click in a cookie set by your own site, and gives webhooks tags such as {gclid}, {utm_source}, {fbp} and {fbc}. Hidden fields set to one of these tags are filled in too, and checked again on your server. The values are never cached by a page cache or CDN, only your own site’s pages can read or change them, and the cookie cannot be read by scripts.
  • One lead, counted once: each submission gets an event ID in the browser. When the success message shows, the page fires an afb:lead event and an afb_lead dataLayer push with that ID, once per submission, so a tracking pixel and a webhook report the same lead and ad platforms count it once. For example: document.addEventListener( ‘afb:lead’, function ( e ) { fbq( ‘track’, ‘Lead’, {}, { eventID: e.detail.event_id } ); } ). On forms embedded on other sites, the host page gets the event too. Forms that redirect to another page can pass the ID in the address with the new {event_id} tag.
  • Settings → Webhooks: “Visitor IP source” for sites behind Cloudflare or a proxy (the default cannot be faked by visitors), and “Default phone country” for numbers typed without a country code.
• New: Submissions: a redesigned entry page and Quick view:
  • Answers first: an entry shows its answers as a clean list. Layout fields (page breaks, HTML blocks, headings and similar) are no longer listed, empty answers are hidden behind “Show empty fields”, and the counter reads “N of M answered”.
  • Sidebar: on wide screens, the submission details and add-on panels (tags, payment) sit beside the answers. Technical details are closed behind “Show technical details”, and each user’s choice is remembered.
  • Header and toolbar: “Entry #N · Form name” with the date, time and source page on one line, and Previous / Next beside it. All entry actions sit in one toolbar of same-size buttons, with More at the end. On phones the buttons show icons only.
  • Quick view: the eye icon on each row, or Shift+V on a focused row, opens the entry’s answers in a dialog over the list. Previous / Next (or J / K) follow the list’s order, and “Open full entry” opens the page. Opening an unread entry marks it read and updates the counts, but the entry stays in the Unread view until the page reloads. The full View link now has an “open” icon.
  • Entry Tags: tags show as compact chips with “+ Add” in the Tags panel, in place of the “Manage Tags” button. The tag picker opens as a dialog over the page.
  • AI Assistant: one “AI” menu with Summarize (quick), Summarize (detailed) and Draft reply…. The summary shows in the sidebar, and Draft reply opens in a dialog.
  • Printing: a printed entry shows the heading, date, source, answers and Details, without buttons or navigation. Long entries continue across pages without splitting an answer. With Stripe Payments, a short payment summary is included, without Stripe IDs.
  • Keyboard: the entry shortcuts pause while a dialog, picker or menu is open, so Escape closes the dialog instead of leaving the entry. The shortcuts dialog lines up correctly in right-to-left languages.
  • Products orders, file attachments, signatures, ratings and matrix answers look the same on the entry page and in Quick view, and products order tables now have proper column alignment and borders.
• Security: Webhook signing secrets are stored encrypted and must be 32 to 256 characters (“Generate” makes one). If a secret can no longer be read, for example after the site’s security keys change, that webhook is held back instead of being sent unsigned, and a notice asks for a new secret.
• Fix: An uploaded file whose original name was not stored showed as “Uploaded file” in emails; it now shows the file’s name.
• Fix: Conversational Forms: the thank-you message after a chat uses the chat’s font and text size.
• Tweak: Conversational Forms: the default chat blue is slightly darker, so white text on it meets WCAG AA contrast.
• Developer: New filters auto_form_builder_merge_tags and auto_form_builder_merge_tag_values add webhook template tags, and auto_form_builder_hidden_field_submit_value lets add-ons resolve a hidden field’s value on the server. The auto_form_builder_webhook_payload filter receives the webhook as a fourth argument.
• Developer: The auto_form_builder_webhook_request_args filter now runs when the webhook is sent (after the page has loaded, or in WP-Cron), not during the submission, and receives the webhook as a third argument.

1.6.0

• New: Products field, free. List the products or services visitors can buy, with a name, price, optional description and image. Show them as checkboxes, a single choice, quantity steppers or cards, and limit how many can be chosen.
• New: Products field: visitors can pick a quantity for each product, within the minimum and maximum you set.
• New: Products field: a live order summary lists each product, its quantity and line total, and the order total as visitors choose. It can cover one field or the whole order.
• New: Products field: with the free Stripe Payments add-on, visitors pay the order total through Stripe Checkout, which shows each product as its own line with its quantity. Prices are always taken from your form, never from the visitor’s browser.
• New: Products field: with URL prefill turned on for the field, a link can preselect products and quantities, for example ?plan=basic:2,banner:1. This only fills in the form; prices are always checked again on your server when it is sent.
• New: Products field: each product can be shown or hidden with conditional logic, and other fields can show or hide depending on what was chosen.
• New: Products field: calculations can use the order total and the quantity of each product.
• New: Products field: orders are shown itemized, with quantities, unit prices, line totals and the total, on the submission page, in the list preview, CSV exports, emails, Slack, Google Sheets, webhooks and saved partial entries. Webhooks also receive the order as structured data. Emails and redirect links can use {field:ID:total} and {field:ID:items}.
• New: Products field: when an order spans several Products fields, the submission page shows the total of the whole order under them.
• New: Submissions: Previous and Next buttons on a submission page open the next entry of the list you came from, with the same tab, filters, search and sort. Without one, they follow All submissions, newest first.
• New: Submissions: “Next unread (3 left)” jumps to the next unread entry in that list. When none are left, “All caught up” links back to the list.
• New: Submissions: a submission page shows where the entry is in its list, for example “12 of 48 in Unread”.
• New: Submissions: after Move to Trash, Mark as spam, Not spam, Restore or Delete permanently on a submission page, the next entry in the list opens (or the previous one at the end). You go back to the list only when it is empty.
• New: Submissions: keyboard shortcuts on a submission page: J next, K previous, U next unread, S star, R read or unread, # move to trash, Esc back to the list. Press ? to see them.
• New: Submissions: on phones, Previous, Next unread and Next stay at the bottom of the screen.
• New: Submissions: “Reply by email” opens your email app with the submitter’s address and the subject “Re: form name”, when the entry has an email answer.
• New: Conversational Forms: embed the chat on any website. Each form’s settings have an Embed section with the code and a Copy button, in the same format as the regular form’s embed code, and a height option (600 px by default). The chat keeps that height and scrolls inside, uses the full width, and is never taller than the screen on phones. While conversational mode is on, the form’s embed shows the chat; add &afb_view=form to the address to embed the regular form instead.
• New: Conversational Forms: the Forms list has a “Copy embed code” button next to each shortcode, like the main All Forms list. It copies the same code as the form’s Embed section, 600 px high.
• New: Conversational Forms: the embedded chat works for logged-out and logged-in visitors, also when the browser blocks cookies in frames from other websites. Rate limits, credits and the Health tab work as on your own pages.
• New: Conversational Forms: in an embed, “Open the regular form” opens it in the same frame with the answers already given filled in. When the form redirects after completion, the whole page goes there; otherwise the completion message shows in the embed.
• Fixed: Stripe Payments: a payment could fail to start, with “The payment could not be started”, when Stripe had already seen an earlier request for the same entry number with different details, for example from a copy of the site connected to the same Stripe account. Each payment attempt now has its own request key, and a retry of the same attempt still can never open a second Checkout page.
• Fixed: when the combined frontend files are not available, forms now also load the Month & Year picker, label and inside-the-field icons, Signature and Calculation files.
• Fixed: popups and other site-wide extras from your site, such as footer notices and scripts added by the theme or other plugins, no longer appear inside an embedded form.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: a form set to redirect after completion now redirects on your own pages too, exactly like the regular form: straight away for “Redirect”, after the message for “Message then redirect”, with field tags in the address filled in.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: a form that takes a Stripe payment now sends the visitor to the Stripe payment page when the chat finishes, also when embedded, instead of leaving an unpaid entry behind. Return, cancel and “Resume payment” work as on the regular form, and the cancel notice shows above the chat. When a submission is refused, for example because a payment can’t be made (amount too low, total of 0, Stripe not connected), the chat shows the same message as the regular form and lets the visitor correct their answer, instead of thanking them. A payment form with a Products field hands the visitor to the regular form, with their answers filled in, to choose products and pay.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: the chat can’t fill in Products fields, so any form with a Products field, not only payment forms, now hands the visitor to the regular form when the chat finishes, with their answers filled in. The form’s settings list its Products fields as chosen in the regular form.
• Fixed: Submissions: on phones, the bottom bar’s labels are no longer cut off. Each button shows its icon above a short label, and the AI Assistant button sits above the bar instead of covering Next.
• Fixed: Products field: order lines read the same everywhere, for example “2 × Basic ($98.00)”, in emails, Slack, Google Sheets and CSV exports.
• Fixed: Products field: a Products field left empty is shown like any other empty field on the submission page and in emails, instead of “No products selected”, and no longer counts as answered.
• Fixed: emails list the submitted fields in the form’s order, in the default admin and confirmation emails and in {submission_data}. A Products field could appear after fields that come later in the form.
• Fixed: CSV export: column headers use the field labels exactly as written in the form, for example “Add-ons” instead of “Add Ons”.
• Tweak: Stripe Payments: if Stripe ever returns a Checkout page for a different amount than the entry owes, that page is closed at once so it cannot be paid.
• Tweak: Submissions: the next entry is loaded ahead of time so Next opens faster. Loading it ahead never marks it read.
• Tweak: Conversational Forms: the License section is gone from the settings. The add-on is free and never asks for or checks a license; a key saved earlier is deleted on update, and everything else keeps working.
• Tweak: Google Sheets: messages with numbers or names in them now explain each placeholder to translators, and messages with two of them number each one so translations can change the order.

1.5.3

• Fixed: Conversational Forms: the chat no longer stops with “The AI response could not be parsed”. A reply the chat cannot read is retried once; if that also fails, the visitor is asked the current question again in the form’s own wording. Visitors never see technical text.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: when a visitor answers with something that is not a value, such as “skip this”, “I’d rather not” or “call me instead”, a required question is asked again politely with the reason it is needed, an optional question is skipped, and a question from the visitor is answered before the chat carries on.
• New: Conversational Forms: after three replies in a row without an answer to a required question, the visitor is offered the regular form. When they open it from the chat, every answer they already gave is filled in, so nothing has to be typed twice. The answers are kept on the server for 5 minutes and never put in the link.
• Changed: Conversational Forms: the instructions sent to the AI on each turn are shorter, so a typical conversation costs about 20% less on every tier, with the same behaviour.
• Changed: Conversational Forms: a reply that AIDA judges unusable is no longer charged, and a retried reply shares one charge with the reply it replaces.
• New: Conversational Forms: the persona, AI instructions, intro and completion messages and the scoring guide have a character limit, with a live counter under each box: 200, 4,000, 400, 400 and 1,000 characters. A save with a longer text is refused with a message that names the text and its length. Texts saved before this update are never shortened for you: a warning on the form’s settings and on the Health tab lists each one until it fits.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: when the AI instructions make the conversation too long for AIDA, the chat no longer fails. Visitors read “This chat isn’t available right now.” with a link to the regular form, which keeps any answers already given. Administrators and the live preview are told how long the instructions are and what the limit is. The case is listed on the Health tab, AIDA is not called again, and no credits are charged.
• New: Conversational Forms: a Health tab lists replies the chat could not use, with the time, form, tier and error, and AIDA’s reason and 0 credits when AIDA judged a reply unusable. The raw reply is shown with the visitor’s words, the answers collected so far, and any email address, phone number or date removed. Entries are kept for up to 7 days, and this works with conversation logging turned off.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: the answer box matches the question being asked, with the right keyboard on phones for email, phone, number, date and time. A “Type a message instead” link is always available, and the small scroll arrows on the empty answer box are gone.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: an answer given while correcting an earlier one is no longer lost, the lead analysis email includes the visitor’s name and email, and stored transcripts keep each answer under its own field. Answers were never saved under the wrong field.
• Fixed: Conversational Forms: the button under the answer summary reads “Confirm & submit” again, without HTML code in its label.
• Fixed: When the same form appears more than once on a page (shortcode, block, popup or embed), the success message, the error box and the refilled answers show only in the copy that was sent. A popup only counts a conversion when its own copy is sent.
• Fixed: The Maximum File Size of a File field accepts decimals such as 0.3 MB in the builder, the browser and the server, and size messages read “0.3 MB” instead of “0 MB”. A size of 0 or below is refused in the builder with a clear message and is not saved. The message for a file of the wrong type lists the types the field really allows, for example “PDF, DOC, DOCX”.
• Fixed: The Address field no longer shows two asterisks on Address Line 1 and City, and their “required” errors use the plugin’s own message instead of the browser’s tooltip.
• Changed: Fields without a label use one name everywhere: the builder, the submission page, the list preview, emails, CSV exports, Google Sheets and webhooks. Webhook payloads also include a “field_labels” list.
• New: Entry exports have a “Choice answers” option: Labels (default) or Values.
• Fixed: Answers to fields inside a Row’s columns, and to an Address field with a custom name, are filled back in when the server rejects a submission and when a visitor moves from the chat to the regular form.
• Fixed: The “N fields submitted” count on a submission page only counts answered fields, and an empty File field is no longer listed as “(file missing)”.
• Fixed: A download link to a file that was deleted says “This file no longer exists.” The security check on downloads is unchanged.
• Changed: Entries of a deleted form are named “Deleted form #34” everywhere, including the Dashboard.
• Changed: Bulk actions no longer offer “Mark as Unread” on the Unread tab or “Add to Starred” on the Starred tab.
• Fixed: On phones, the Submissions tabs show their names without overlapping, the filter dropdowns are no longer cut off, and the bottom bulk actions and paging bar sit below the list.
• Fixed: Field tiles in the builder show their full name, such as “Month & Year”, in every language.
• Fixed: The scripts and styles of the built-in add-ons now follow the plugin version, so browsers load the new files after an update instead of a cached copy.
• Fixed: A form with an NPS or Opinion Scale field that has no field name can be sent again when that question is left unanswered, instead of failing with “Please select a valid rating”. Fields without a name no longer pick up another field’s answer during validation.
• Changed: The documentation links on the Help & Support page open the online documentation at autoformbuilder.com in a new tab.
• Removed: The “Plugin .htaccess” line on the System Status page. It reported a file the plugin never creates; the protection of the uploads folder is unchanged.
• Changed: The plugin now ships the source code and build files needed to rebuild its compiled scripts (src/, scripts/, vite.config.js, package.json and package-lock.json), and SOURCE-CODE.txt describes them accurately.

Older versions: see changelog.txt in the plugin folder.