Configuring Contact Form Plugins

Tutorial 3 of 5

1. Introduction

This tutorial aims to guide you through the process of configuring contact form plugins on your WordPress site. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a functional contact form on your site, enabling visitors to send messages directly to your inbox.

Prerequisites:

  • Basic understanding of WordPress
  • Admin access to a WordPress site
  • A contact form plugin installed (We will be using Contact Form 7)

2. Step-by-Step Guide

1. Install and Activate Contact Form 7

First, you need to install and activate the Contact Form 7 plugin. Go to your WordPress dashboard, click on "Plugins > Add New", search for "Contact Form 7", install and activate it.

2. Configure the Contact Form

Once the plugin is activated, go to "Contact > Contact Forms". Here, you can create and manage your forms. Click on "Add New" to create a new form.

Contact Form 7 comes with a default form template which you can customize according to your needs. The form fields are created using simple markup, which is explained in the Contact Form 7 documentation.

3. Embed the Contact Form in Your Page

After setting up the form, you need to embed it in your page. Contact Form 7 generates a shortcode for each form that you can insert into your posts or pages. Copy the shortcode and paste it into the editor of the page where you want the form to appear.

3. Code Examples

Here's an example of a simple contact form configuration:

<label> Your Name (required)
    [text* your-name] </label>

<label> Your Email (required)
    [email* your-email] </label>

<label> Subject
    [text your-subject] </label>

<label> Your Message
    [textarea your-message] </label>

[submit "Send"]

In this code:

  • label tags are used to define the label for each input field.
  • text* and email* are input fields. The asterisk (*) means these fields are required.
  • textarea is used for multi-line input, such as a message.
  • submit is the button that the user will click to send the form.

4. Summary

In this tutorial, we've learned how to install and activate the Contact Form 7 plugin, configure a new form, and embed it on a page.

For further learning, you can explore other features of Contact Form 7, such as form validation, spam filtering, and email customization.

5. Practice Exercises

  1. Easy: Create a simple contact form with fields for name, email, and message.
  2. Medium: Add a required phone number field to your form.
  3. Hard: Customize the email that you receive when someone submits the form.

Solutions:

  1. You can follow the example provided in this tutorial.
  2. Add [tel* your-phone] to your form.
  3. Go to the "Mail" tab in the form settings and modify the fields as needed.