Sharing & embedding

A form does nothing until people can reach it. Once you publish, GCM gives you a public URL — and as many ways as you'd like to put that URL in front of people.

The public URL

The instant you click Publish on a form, a green banner shows up at the top of the builder canvas with the form's full shareable URL. Two icons let you copy it or open it in a new tab.

The URL is constructed in priority order:

1. Custom domain — if your church has set up a custom domain and it's verified, the URL is https://yourdomain.com/form/{slug}.
2. Org subdomain — otherwise, GCM gives you a free subdomain at https://{org-slug}.geniuschurchmanager.com/form/{slug}.
3. App fallback — if neither is set up yet, the URL falls back to https://app.geniuschurchmanager.com/s/{org-slug}/form/{slug} (only really happens during the first few minutes of an org's life).

The {slug} part is what you set in the builder (lowercased, hyphen-separated). It controls the URL but not the form title.

Editing the slug

In the builder canvas, the slug field sits just below the name and description, prefixed with /form/:

Type into it directly. GCM normalizes as you type — uppercase letters drop to lowercase, illegal characters disappear, and you'll see a live preview of the full URL below the input.

Slug rules:

• Only a–z, 0–9, and - (hyphen)
• No leading or trailing hyphen
• No two hyphens in a row
• Must be unique within your org

If your slug breaks any of these, the save button stays disabled and a small error appears.

By default, GCM auto-generates the slug from the form name. The moment you edit the slug manually, GCM stops auto-syncing — you have full control from then on.

Don't rename a published slug

The URL is what's printed on bulletins, posted on social, and pasted into your church's link tree. Changing the slug on a published form breaks every one of those links. Pick a slug carefully on day one and treat it as permanent.

Ways to share

Direct URL

The default. Paste the URL into:

• Your church's link tree (Linktree, Beacons, etc.)
• A social media post
• A WhatsApp broadcast
• An email signature
• A QR code printed on a bulletin or flyer (most QR-code generators are free)

QR codes

Generate a QR code from the public URL using any external tool (Google "QR code generator"). The QR code is just an image of the URL — print it on the back of your bulletin, on a postcard at the welcome desk, on a sign in the lobby. People scan with their phone camera, the URL opens, the form loads.

We don't have a built-in QR generator yet, but it's a thirty-second job in any external tool.

Embedded on your website

The cleanest way to put a form on your own site is to use the Website Builder. Add a Form Block to any page, pick the form from the dropdown, save. The form renders inline with your site's colors, fonts, and styling — visitors don't leave your page to fill it out.

This is what most churches use for "Contact Us," "Prayer Request," "I want to volunteer," and "RSVP" pages. The page stays branded; the form sits inside the layout naturally.

Iframe (advanced)

If you have a website outside GCM (Squarespace, WordPress, Wix), you can embed the standalone form URL in an iframe:

<iframe
  src="https://yourchurch.geniuschurchmanager.com/form/prayer-request"
  width="100%"
  height="800"
  frameborder="0"
  style="max-width: 600px;"
></iframe>

The iframe sandboxes the form, so it'll look slightly less integrated than the Website Builder approach. But it works on any site that accepts HTML embeds.

Authentication

By default a form is open to anyone who has the URL. Toggle Require authentication in form settings to lock it down to logged-in admins only. This is useful for internal-use forms — staff incident reports, leader feedback, etc. — that you don't want a random visitor to be able to submit.

When auth is required and an unauthenticated visitor hits the URL, they get a login prompt instead of the form.

One submission per person

By default, the same person can submit the form as many times as they want. If you flip Allow multiple submissions off in form settings, GCM tracks the visitor by browser fingerprint and shows them a "You've already submitted this form" message on revisit.

This isn't bulletproof — clearing cookies or using a different browser bypasses it — but it's enough to stop accidental double-submissions.

Closing a form

Three ways to close a form to new submissions:

• Unpublish — URL returns 404. Use this when the form is permanently retired.
• Max submissions — set a cap. Past the cap, the form shows "Submissions closed" instead of the fields.
• Archive — move the form to the archive (from the form list dropdown). Equivalent to unpublishing but also removes it from the main list view.

All three are reversible — you can republish, raise the cap, or unarchive at any time. Past submissions are never deleted.