I’ve tested several contact form plugins within my blogs, and my favorite by far is one called Contact Form 7. In my experience it’s the best contact form for WordPress and if you’re looking for a decent contact plugin, I’d definitely recommend it.
If you’re trying to run a business online, it’s important to have a way for potential customers and clients to get in touch with you. While it can be done by simply providing your email, it can be a lot easier and more effective to have a contact form embedded within a page for people to get in touch with you. This makes it very simple and easy for them to write a message directly from you website, without having to even up their email.
Advantages to using Contact Form 7
- It’s one of the most popular contact form plugins. This means there’s lots of users and frequent updates
- They have an amazing website that provides tutorials on how to use the features
- It’s simple and clean, nice overall appearance to the contact form
- Highly customizable – ability to more field options, radio buttons, drop down menus, CAPTCHA
- Ability for users to send file attatchments
The downside is you’ll need to do some basic coding if you want to edit the default form. They provide you great resources for tutorials on how to do it though if needed, and it isn’t very complicated.
Contact Form 7 overview and installation
If you don’t know how to install a plugin within your WordPress site, you can do so by simply visiting your admin user dashboard and clicking on “Plugins — Add New” Search for Contact Form 7, and click the install button. Once it’s installed, click activate.
After it’s activated, you should see a “Contact” option within your left dashboard. Click on it to add a new contact form.
Editing the contact form and message
If you’re just in need of a basic contact form, you really do NOT need to edit the form at all. You can just use the provided code and it works just fine. It’s nice, clean simple and asks for all basic information.
Here is what you’ll see within the contact form dashboard:
You’ll notice they already have a contact form premade for you. You can go ahead and grab the code to use as is (if you want). It works just fine. I’m going to go ahead and click edit just to provide a basic overview.
You’ll see a default form code provided. If you want to add fields, there’s a list of options on the right. You can also click the “docs” link above and it’ll take you to their website with tutorials on how to use the plugin in great detail.
You’ll want to scroll down and make sure the provided email is correct. This is where your contact form messages will be directly sent. If you want it to get sent to another email, go ahead and change it here.
Now that it’s edited to my liking, I’m going to click “save”. Then copy the code up top and create a new page.
I’m going to call the new page “contact” and simply copy the code within my editor. It does not matter if you use the visual or text editor for this, it will work the same. Hit publish!
Now go ahead and view the page. You should have a nice clean contact form like this!
What are your thoughts about Contact Form 7? Do you have a contact plugin you like better? Would love to hear your thoughts.
-Wendy
Owner, SurvivingAfterCollege.com
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