Understand submissions and manage entries

Understand the submission lifecycle

Drecha Forms processes ordinary responses on your WordPress website. It does not require a Drecha SaaS account and does not impose a submission quota; practical capacity depends on your hosting and database.

When a visitor submits a published form, Drecha Forms:

1. Checks the request size, same-origin information when supplied, signed public form token, rate limit, honeypot, and idempotency key.
2. Determines which fields and pages are active under the form's conditional rules.
3. Validates required fields, formats, choices, calculations, form-level rules, and uploads on the server.
4. Stores an accepted response atomically in the local database.
5. Queues eligible email and entitled integration work only after storage succeeds.
6. Returns the configured confirmation message or redirect.

An idempotency key prevents an accidental retry from creating a second entry. Email failure does not remove a successfully stored entry.

Help visitors correct invalid answers

The public form shows field-specific validation feedback, marks invalid controls, moves a multi-step form to the page containing the problem, and focuses the first error. Always write custom errors as instructions that explain the fix.

After a valid submission, the visitor sees the configured message or is sent to the configured HTTPS redirect. A fresh token and idempotency key allow a deliberate second submission.

Search and filter the Entries screen

1. Open Drecha Forms > Entries as an administrator with the Drecha Forms management capability.
2. Search by email, submitted value, form title, or entry reference.
3. Filter by form or by Unread, Read, Spam, or Erased status.
4. Select Apply. Use Clear to return to the unfiltered list.
5. Open Configure columns to show or hide Form, Status, Submitted, and Reference.
6. Move through the paginated results instead of loading the entire entry table.

Spam is stored separately and never triggers email. Opening an unread entry marks it read. You can later mark it unread, read, or spam.

Review one entry

Open an entry to review its submitted values, status, UTC timestamp, reference, spam score, secure uploaded files, private notes, email attempts, and queued job information.

Use Add a private note for information intended only for administrators. Notes are limited to 5,000 characters. Private uploads use an authorized download endpoint; do not copy a server file path into a public page.

Export, retain, or remove entries

CSV export respects the selected form and status filters and streams rows rather than loading every matching response into memory. Spreadsheet-dangerous values are escaped to prevent formula execution when the file is opened.

Set each form's Retention period (days) in the builder. Use 0 to keep entries until an administrator deletes or erases them. WordPress personal-data export and erasure tools can find declared personal fields; erasure also removes related private files.

To delete entries, select one or more records and use the delete action. The confirmation dialog explains that deletion is permanent. Deleting an entry removes its response, private notes, email logs, queued work, and uploaded files. Bulk deletion is limited to 100 entries per request.

Free and Pro differences

Unlimited local submissions, validation, spam handling, secure uploads, entry search and filters, notes, statuses, CSV export, retention, and WordPress privacy integration are included in Free. Pro integrations run only after Free has stored the response. Disabling Pro leaves entries available in Free and does not corrupt premium configuration.

Troubleshoot submissions and entries

A visitor sees a message to refresh the form

The signed form token may have expired, the page may be cached too long, or the form changed after the page loaded. Refresh the public page and try again. Exclude tokenized form pages from unusually long full-page caches when the problem repeats.

A valid visitor is rate-limited

Wait before retrying and check whether a reverse proxy causes many visitors to share one apparent address. Do not disable validation or public abuse protection as a shortcut.

An entry exists but no email arrived

This is expected when the message is still queued, the response was classified as spam, or mail failed. Open the entry and inspect Email attempts. Submission storage deliberately does not depend on email success.

A private upload cannot be opened

Confirm that you are signed in with the Drecha Forms management capability and that the entry still exists. Private files are not public media-library URLs and require an authorized download request.