Form Submissions

Any <form> element in your site that includes a data-sleekcms="<name>" attribute is captured automatically — submissions stream into SleekCMS without any backend setup, no action URL, no JavaScript glue. The Forms section of the CMS is where those submissions land.

This page covers what arrives in the inbox, how submissions are organized, and where the form schema is defined.

How Submissions Are Captured

When a visitor submits a form on your published site, the SleekCMS forms backend receives the request, validates the form name, and stores the submission against that form. Every named input on the form is persisted as a field on the submission record.

<form data-sleekcms="contact">
  <input name="name" type="text" required>
  <input name="email" type="email" required>
  <textarea name="message"></textarea>
  <button type="submit">Send</button>
</form>

The data-sleekcms value groups submissions by form — "contact", "newsletter", "quote-request", etc. Standard HTML name attributes on inputs become the field keys.

No action URL is required. No JavaScript. Submissions are captured server-side as part of the SleekCMS deployment.

→ Form Backend

The Submissions Inbox

The Forms section in the SleekCMS sidebar lists every form your site has received submissions for. Selecting a form opens its inbox — a table of every submission grouped by form name, with the fields shown as columns.

For each submission you see the time it was received, the values of every named field, and the user agent / referrer captured at submit time. You can scan, sort, and search across the table to find specific submissions.

Submissions are read-only. They cannot be edited from the inbox — they're a record of what the visitor sent, preserved exactly as received.

Form Schemas vs. Submissions

It's useful to keep two concepts separate:

The form lives in your site code — it's HTML markup with a data-sleekcms="<name>" attribute and a set of named inputs. You author the form in the Builder section (under Form Backend) or directly in any template.

The submissions live in the SleekCMS database — captured by the backend when visitors submit the form. They're viewed in the Forms section.

The two are loosely coupled by the form name. Renaming the form (changing data-sleekcms) effectively starts a new submission group; the old submissions stay attached to the previous name.

Access Control

Submissions are visible to admins by default. Editors do not see the Forms section unless explicitly granted access through fine-grained permissions on their membership.

→ Site Members

What's Next

• Form Backend — Building forms in your site code and configuring the form processor.
• Site Members — Granting editors access to submissions.
• Content API — Reading site content programmatically (note: form submissions are not exposed via the content API).