CORE - CiviCRM Footer Afforms

A WordPress must-use plugin that makes CiviCRM Form Builder (Afform) forms work when they are placed outside the page content: footers, headers, popups and widgets.

The problem

CiviCRM only loads its Angular/Afform resources when it finds a CiviCRM shortcode in the page body. A form placed in a footer is rendered after wp_head has already run, so its scripts are never queued and the form does not display, unless the same page also happens to have a form in the body.

There is a second problem for logged-in users. CiviCRM builds its front-end AJAX URLs from the permalink of the global $post. While Elementor renders a footer template, $post is the template itself (/?elementor_library=...), and CiviCRM appends ?civiwp=CiviCRM&q=..., producing a URL with two ?. Afform.prefill then returns a 404 and the form hangs on its loading spinner.

What it does

1. Finds forms used outside the content. It scans for [civicrm component="afform" name="..."] shortcodes in:

   • Elementor Pro Theme Builder header, footer and popup templates
   • Elementor Header & Footer Builder templates (elementor-hf)
   • Astra Custom Layouts / Site Builder (astra-advanced-hook)
   • Block theme template parts (wp_template_part)
   • Classic Text, Custom HTML and Block widgets

   The list of form names is cached in a transient and cleared whenever one of those sources changes.

2. Queues them before wp_head. On the wp hook it initialises CiviCRM, calls front_end_page_load() and adds the forms' Angular modules. Sites with no such forms never boot CiviCRM.

3. Fixes CiviCRM's front-end URL base. Through the civicrm/core/url/base filter, URLs built while a layout template is the current post use the page actually being viewed, and a base that already contains ? falls back to the home page.

Installation

Copy core-civicrm-footer-afforms.php into your mu-plugins directory (normally wp-content/mu-plugins/; create it if it does not exist). Must-use plugins load automatically, with no activation step.

After installing, flush CiviCRM caches once (cv flush, or Administer > System Settings > Cleanup Caches and Update Paths) so cached JavaScript picks up the corrected URLs.

Forms that are not detected

Add form names yourself with the core_footer_afform_names filter:

add_filter( 'core_footer_afform_names', function ( $names ) {
    $names[] = 'afformMyForm';
    return $names;
} );

Requirements

• WordPress with CiviCRM and Form Builder (Afform)
• Forms placed with the [civicrm component="afform" name="..."] shortcode

Licence

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.