This guide takes you from an empty site to a working SmartDingo Form Tracker setup: install,
activate, enter your license, do a first configuration, and — most importantly — verify that
tracking actually works. Allow about 10–15 minutes.

Note SmartDingo Form Tracker works alongside your form plugin. It does not create forms;
it reads tracking data and fills it into the form fields you already have. Make sure the form you
want to track already exists on a page before you start.

Prerequisites

• WordPress 5.0 or newer and PHP 7.4 or newer.
  

  Warning The plugin does not block activation on older versions — it simply may not work
  correctly. Confirm your environment meets these minimums before installing.

• At least one supported form plugin, active, with a form on a published page. Fully supported
  (reliable capture after the form validates): Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, WPForms,
  Fluent Forms, Elementor Pro, WS Form, Formidable Forms, Ninja Forms. Other/unknown forms and
  redirect-style confirmations are captured on a best-effort basis (see
  Supported form plugins).
• Administrator access (the manage_options capability).
• A SmartDingo license only if you want paid features. (Free) works with no license key.
• If your site uses a caching/optimization plugin or a WAF (e.g. LiteSpeed, WP Rocket,
  Cloudflare, ModSecurity), you may need to purge caches or add an exclusion during setup —
  see Troubleshooting.

Step 1 — Install the plugin

You can install the free build from WordPress.org, or upload the premium build from your account.

Option A — From WordPress.org (Free):

1. In WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New.
2. Search for “SmartDingo Form Tracker”.
3. Click Install Now on the SmartDingo Form Tracker card.

Option B — Upload the premium ZIP (Starter / Pro):

1. Download the plugin ZIP from your SmartDingo account (the download link is in your purchase
   email and your account page).
2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
3. Choose the ZIP file and click Install Now.

Note If you are upgrading an existing install, do a clean replacement rather than uploading
over the old folder — see Before you go live.

Step 2 — Activate the plugin

1. Go to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
2. Find SmartDingo Form Tracker and click Activate.

A new SmartDingo Form Tracker menu appears in the admin sidebar with four pages:
Settings, Leads, Privacy, and Tools.

Step 3 — Enter and activate your license

Right after activation you’ll see the SmartDingo (Freemius) connection screen.

• Free plan: you can skip / opt out — no key is required. You keep all (Free) features.
• Starter / Pro: paste your license key into the activation field and click Activate.
  Your key is in your purchase email and on your SmartDingo account page. A successful activation
  shows your plan name and unlocks the paid features.

Warning Only ever paste your license key into SmartDingo’s own activation field. Never enter
it into unrelated forms, and don’t put it in URLs or screenshots.

To move a license to another site, or deactivate it, see
Licenses & plans.

Step 4 — First configuration

4.1 Choose what to track

Go to SmartDingo Form Tracker → Settings and enable the Tracking Fields you need
(UTM parameters, click IDs, landing page, device, etc.). Each field shows a plan badge; fields
above your plan are disabled. Only enabled fields can be mapped to a form.

4.2 Create a form configuration and map fields

Still on the Settings page, under Form Configurations, add a configuration for the form you
want to track. You then map each tracked value to a field in your form using a CSS selector.
There are two ways to do this:

Option A — Page scanner (recommended):

1. Click Scan page on the configuration.
2. Type or search for the page that contains your form and run the scan.
3. Pick the detected form and click Import Selected. SmartDingo creates one mapping row per
   enabled tracking field and auto-matches selectors for you.

Option B — Map manually:

1. Click + Add Mapping.
2. Choose a Tracked Field (e.g. UTM Source).
3. Enter a CSS Selector for the target input, for example input[name="utm_source"].
4. Optionally tick Hide to visually hide that field on the page (useful for hidden
   tracking fields).

Note Create one configuration per form. If two forms on a page share the same selector,
only one is filled — give each form its own configuration and selectors. See
Field mapping & auto-fill.

Click Save Settings.

4.3 (Optional) Enable lead capture (Starter)

If you want each submission stored as a lead:

1. Go to the Privacy page.
2. Tick Enable lead tracking.

Note Lead capture requires a paid plan. On the free plan this toggle is shown but disabled.

4.4 Choose a consent mode

On the Privacy page, pick how tracking data may be stored:

• Off — track immediately (no consent check).
• WP Consent API — wait for consent via the WordPress Consent API (works with Complianz,
  CookieYes, Cookiebot).
• Manual — start tracking when a specific cookie has a specific value.

GDPR “Off” stores visitor data (which, combined with a submitted form, is personal data)
without a consent check. Choose a consent mode deliberately if you are in the EU/UK or otherwise
subject to consent rules. See GDPR & consent.

Step 5 — Verify it’s working (do not skip)

Tracking is invisible, so always confirm it end-to-end — otherwise it’s easy to assume the
plugin is broken when it’s really a cache, consent, or mapping issue.

1. Visit your site with test UTM parameters on the URL, for example:

   https://yoursite.com/contact/?utm_source=sdft-test&utm_medium=verify

2. Fill in the mapped form with recognizable test data (e.g. name “SDFT Test”,
   email sdft-test@example.com) and submit it.

3. Confirm the result:

   • With lead tracking on (Starter): go to SmartDingo Form Tracker → Leads and confirm a
     new lead appears with Source = sdft-test, your test contact details, the correct form
     name, and the tracking data. Delete the test lead afterwards.
   • On the free plan (no Leads page): go to Tools → enable the Debug overlay, reload the
     form page while logged in as an administrator, and confirm the overlay shows your stored
     values and that the mapped field was filled.

Warning On cached sites, purge the cache first (see
Before you go live) and confirm the page loads the current tracker
script — view source and look for sdft-tracker.js?ver=<current version>. A stale cached page
loads the old script and the test will not reflect your changes.

Troubleshooting (quick)

If no lead or no stored value appears, check these first:

• Caching — purge your page cache/CDN and retry (cached pages freeze the security token).
• Consent — if a consent mode is set, was consent granted?
• Mapping — is the form actually mapped, and does the mapped selector exist on the form?
• Form plugin — is it one of the supported plugins, and does it submit via AJAX?

The full guide is in Troubleshooting.

Next steps

• Field mapping & auto-fill
• Supported form plugins
• Managing leads
• Before you go live