Happy New Year, Wu-friends, Emilie from Support here! It’s a new year which means you get a new start. But 2014 isn’t too far behind us just yet. And so in the spirit of bringing what we’ve learned from the past into our form future–we’re here to share the top 3 support questions that you, dear customers and form ninjas, have asked us about in the last year.

If you take these 3 tips–along with Michael’s handy 3 common pitfalls to avoid blog–into the new year with you as you create those fab forms of yours? Well, then we guarantee you’ll be set for genuine form success in 2015.

Let’s get it going, shall we?

1. Help! How do I reset entry IDs?

Since you’re a savvy form builder, you know to submit a few test entries to your Contact Me forms before it goes live. The form performs just how you want it to, so now you can delete those five test entries. After you do, the first entry in the Entry Manager is numbered 6, not 1–even though it’s currently the first entry in the list.

No matter which entries are deleted from your account (and when) the entry ID associated with each entry in the form will remain the same. This ID number is hard-coded into our database, so there isn’t any way to update it. Being aware of this will help you keep track of all the submissions your forms have historically received.

What’s the work-around if you need to start numbering entries from scratch again? Duplicate the form and collect real entries through the duplicate. When you duplicate a form, none of the entries are carried over, so any new entries collected there will start at 1 again.

2. Argh! Having SSL issues. What can I do?

We’ve enabled SSL security by default for all forms free and paid. So this means that the data submitted will always be secure, whether you’re sending out the direct form links or embedding them in your site with the code we provide you.

However, SSL encryption can cause a conflict with CSS-hosted themes, which many of you have written in to us about. If you’re hosting your form theme with a custom CSS file, make sure that the CSS file is loading over SSL as well. There are several great sites that generate SSL URLS for free, like Dropbox or Google Drive.

We can tell the example theme below is SSL-encrypted, due to the https:// in the hosted file URL:

Is your CSS styling not showing in the live form? Here’s how to resolve the issue:

– Host the CSS file somewhere else, where it is encrypted.
– If you prefer to avoid all SSL browser conflicts, you can remove SSL from both the hosted CSS file, and your form. Click here for instructions on how to disable SSL on your form.

3. Show me the way of templating, please!

Aaah, Templating. One of the most powerful and useful tools in the Wufoo bag o’ tricks can sometimes be tricky to get the hang of. And for those of you out there not already familiar, this feature lets you pull form data into the confirmation message and email, and notification email. Translation: The people who submit an entry will receive a personalized confirmation email/message including their name, email address, or any other information they inputted to specific fields! Or simply–when new entries come in, your colleagues can see the Entry ID, date it was submitted, or even the total amount paid, all at a glance in the subject line of the notification email.

Templating has two components:

→The Template tag
→The Parameter

The template tag is what tells the system to pull either field or entry data. The parameter tells the system specifically where to pull that data from. Let’s see how this works using my Contact Me form as an example: I want the Confirmation Message to show the date the user selected.

First, navigate to the Confirmation Options section of the Form Settings tab. Below the confirmation message text box, click Templating Options.

The API Information page will open. Take the ID number of the field that you want to draw data from, and note that this doesn’t always correspond with the order that fields appear in the form. In this case it does: The Date field is also API ID 1.

Head back to the Form Settings tab. The template tag for pulling field data is: {entry:Field#}

Combine this with the parameter: The API ID number. Replace # with 1, and place this tag where you want the date to appear in the message. So when you’re all finished, this is what the Confirmation Message will look like from your end:

But after submitting an entry, the users get the personalized message:

Awesome, right? For those of you who’d like a more detailed Templating walk-through, check out Aubri’s great blog.

Thanks for reading and as always, please feel free to leave any comments, questions, or suggestions below. Form on, friends!