Let me preface this by admitting that I'm both a Wordpress NOOB, and....
being a bear of very little brain, I'm easily befuddled and pretty sure that most of the time I've missed something painfully obvious.

I'm running WP 2.8.3 themed with Atahualpa 3.4.2.

Currently that configuration is running two sites. The first is a blog, and everything is running swimmingly there. The second is a site where I'm using WP as a CMS, using mostly pages and widgets.

The problem is that I cannot manage to build a simple form on a page. The Atahualpa>Various Content Items>Style FORMS settings have no visible effect on form fields or submit buttons.

But I'm not altogether sure that it's really a problem with the theme. How are forms supposed to be added to content? I'm trying (as the administrator) to make a simple form on a page (not a post) with a label, a textbox and a submit button. I would like it to look roughly like this:

Wordpress, or Atahualpa, or the HTML editor (sic) in WP or something insists on mangling the half dozen lines of HTML or PHP or whatever I try to write the form in. For no obvious reason, it is adamant about adding <br> tags between the label and the textfield, and taking them out between the textfield and the submit button.

I've come to terms with the apparent fact that the HTML editor in Wordpress isn't really an HTML editor. It's a funny bb-code like editor that adds and deletes <br>, <p> and </p> tags according to a set of secret rules I can't find anywhere in the Wordpress Codex.

I've tried solutions like PHP plugins (runPHP, PHP Execution, etc) to no avail. Even form definitions added as PHP includes get mangled by the Wordpress daemons (daemons in the demonic entity sense, not the computer science sense).

All the form plugins I've tried are designed either to write information to the database, or to email the contents of the form. None will appear to let me set the "action" attribute and pass information to a system outside Wordpress, which I what I'm trying to accomplish.

So my question for this forum is: What are the styles set by Atahualpa>Various Content Items>Style FORMS intended to control if there's no way to put a form into a page?

...and if anyone can point me at a plugin or a tutorial that shows how to put a simple form on a page. I'd be grateful.

One final thought: Have I missed a magic tag (or pseudotag) that turns off the content-mangling in WP? ...something like <span style='no-mangle'> </span>

<sigh></rant>

Wordpress tries to be helpful and make posts and pages "pretty." Most of the time, this is a OK, but sometimes, it makes it impossible to enter code the way you need it. There are plugins that allow you to turn of the functionality that is causing you trouble. I use one called Raw HTML. You can search for it in the wordpress plugin directory.

Brad,

Many, many thanks! The Raw HTML plug-in completely flattened the problem of Wordpress messing with my html and php code!

This is a HUGE improvement over the previous situation and makes Wordpress a world-class CMS system. (This is especially useful in that it lets me use Wordpress for both CMS and blogging tasks. Since my brain gets full rather easily these days, being able to use a single tool for both let's me save precious "organic memory" resources for things like remembering the location of my local pub! Critically important stuff, I'm sure you'll agree).

Alas... the Atalhualpa CSS setting for forms still have no effect on the form elements. I'm hoping that someone will chime in with a solution to that problem that is as elegant as yours was.

Thanks again!

Give the input field and the button CSS classes. Atahualpa does not style all form elements, only elements with certain classes

<input class="text" type="text" ...... />
<input class="button" type="submit" ...... />

Thanks! That was the bit I was missing. Works perfectly!