Registration Forms

Registration forms are optional. The following information is automatically collected when someone registers for an event:

• registrant name
• billing contact information, including email

For simple events, this is often sufficient, and you don't need to mess around with special registration forms.

In other cases, you will need to put together a special form to ask for registration details that might be important for you. Examples of the sorts of questions you might need to ask:

• company/organization
• name for badges
• professional designations
• meal options and/or dietary needs
• waivers, consent, and releases

You generally do not need to ask for full contact information, since you already collect a full suite of contact information at checkout. But in some circumstances, you might want to collect contact information for specific purposes, including:

• emergency contacts
• company contact info

It can also be a good idea to collect just e-mail on registration forms, to ensure you have distinct contact info for each registrant, even when multiple people register on a single invoice with a single billing contact.

When adding contact information fields to forms, naming your form inputs appropriately can help the system recognize contact info and re-use it for things like email notifications, and autocompletion of billing info. Use form field names like first_name, last_name, organization, address, city, provstate, pcode, country, email, phone, fax, website.

Registration form context

Registration forms can be set up in several contexts:

• Main event form: a registration form in the main event will be used as the default registration form for the whole event. Unless a more specific form has been set up for the fee the registrant is entering through, the main event form will be used.
• Fee-specific form: a registration form in a specific fee will be used for registrants in that fee only.
• Activity form: activities usually do not have separate registration forms, since you have already collected registrant information for the main event. However, some activities (for example meals) may require extra selections, and will therefore have their own forms. These secondary forms do not need to duplicate questions already collected for the main event.

It is best to start with your main event form, and then add any special cases you might need after that.

Re-using forms

Use the Setup Registration Form pane to create your form. You have three choices for how to add a new form:

1. Create a new form from scratch: this takes the longest, but gives you the most flexibility in setting things up.
2. Copy an existing registration form, allowing you to modify it: after you have done a few events, it will probably be easier to just copy a registration form you have already created, and then make some minor changes to it.
3. Re-use an existing registration form without changes: if all your events are similar, you might not ever need to modify your registration forms. In that case, simply re-use the forms you have already created, which is the quickest option of all.

Regardless of your choice, your registration form is built and configured using the Forms module. If you elect to work on the form itself, you will be sent to the Forms module to do it.