Pardot Login Changes & WordPress Plugin

Starting February '21, Pardot is going to discontinue its own login and will require users to login with Salesforce credentials. This impacts all the apps where users normally use Pardot credentials to login, including logging into Pardot itself. One of the impacts of this change is the use of Pardot forms in WordPress. Previously, one would authenticate by logging in to Pardot plugin in WordPress using Pardot credentials and then use a Pardot form in WordPress. But this is changing and there are quite a few setup steps that need to be done to prepare for this change.

The screenshot below is the Pardot plug-in in Wordpress. You have to choose Salesforce SSO as the authentication type. There are a few setup steps you need to do to fill in all of the information in the below screenshot such as the consumer secret, consumer key and business unit ID. I will walk you through all the necessary steps in this guide with the ultimate goal of filling out this form in WordPress.

Salesforce Steps:

To get your Pardot Business Unit ID:

1. Switch to Lightning Experience. Click Setup.
2. Search for Pardot Setup Home, click Assign Admin to get to the list of Business Units
3. Get the business unit ID. It starts with 0Uv.

To get Consumer Key & Secret Key:

In order to use Salesforce SSO authentication, you must create a connected application for the plugin in your Salesforce org.

1. In Salesforce, click on Setup and then search for App Manager.
2. Once you are in App Manager, click the “New Connected App” button.
3. Enter an app name (something like Pardot Connected App so it's easy to remember what you created it for), API name, and contact email of your choice.
4. Click the “Enable OAuth Settings” toggle.
5. Enter a Callback URL to allow Salesforce to redirect users back to your Pardot plugin settings page. The URL should look similar to: https://[YourWordpressDomainHere]/wp-admin/options-general.php?page=pardot. Note: Don't try to derive this from the example shown here. Go to the actual Pardot plugin settings page and copy the link to be absolutely sure you are not messing with the link.
6. Add “Access Pardot Services (pardot_api)” and “Perform requests on your behalf at any time (refresh_token, offline_access)” to your selected OAuth scopes.
7. Save your connected application. A new page will appear with the Consumer Key and Consumer Secret.

WordPress Steps:

Next on the Wordpress side of things, you need to make sure of a few things before you can switch to Salesforce SSO for Pardot forms.

1. Update the website's PHP: this is something you should ask your web folks to do. Pardot plug-in in WordPress requires that the PHP version is 7.0 or higher.
2. Update the WordPress version to the latest version: this is something you should ask your web folks to do it. Pardot plug-in in WordPress requires that the WordPress version is 5.4 or higher.
3. Next update your Pardot plugin if you are using an older version. Only the latest versions will let you update from Pardot login to Salesforce SSO but the first two steps in this section need to be completed in the order mentioned.

Finally, once you have ensured that your website PHP version and WordPress version is at the levels that Pardot plugin requires and have created the Connected App, complete the following in WordPress:

1. Enter your Consumer Key, Consumer Secret, and Pardot Business Unit ID into the Pardot WordPress settings screen (the first screenshot in this post).
2. Click “Save Settings”.
3. When the page reloads, click “Authenticate with Salesforce”. Enter your Salesforce credentials in the popup that appears.

You should then see Authentication Status change from “Not Authenticated” to “Authenticated”.

Hope this one stop guide helps you in preparing for the very important transition. It's good to do this early and make sure everything is working smoothly. Last thing you want is your web form to stop working and leads getting turned away. Good luck and as always feel free to comment.