One of the most important features every website should have is a contact form which allows visitors to contact you safely and securely. I recommend Contact Form 7, which allows you to make all sorts of forms, not just contact forms, that will send information to an email address of your choice.

Install Contact Form 7 on WordPress

  • Login to your WordPress Dashboard
  • –> Plugins
  • –> –> Add New
  • Search term = Contact Form 7 [Search Plugins]
  • Select Contact Form 7 from search results [Install]
  • [Install Now]
  • [Activate Plugin]
  • Check site still loads correctly.

One of the features of Contact Form 7 is the ability to include Captcha. If you want to include Captcha on your forms you also need to install Really Simple CAPTCHA:

Install Really Simple CAPTCHA on WordPress

  • Login to your WordPress Dashboard
  • –> Plugins
  • –> –> Add New
  • Search term = Really Simple CAPTCHA [Search Plugins]
  • Select Really Simple CAPTCHA from search results [Install]
  • [Install Now]
  • [Activate Plugin]
  • Check site still loads correctly.

Your first Contact Form with Contact Form 7

  • Login to your WordPress Dashboard
  • –> Contact

    • The Contact Form 7 plugin creates the first form for you. This is a basic form which you can edit or change as suits you. The first section of this page shows you the snippet of code you will need to copy and paste into your contact page. But first, lets take a look at the other fields on this page.

  • Form

    • In the “form” field you will see a textarea box that has HTML code inside. The codes used here are very simple. <p> is a paragraph tag. This creates a block of text that breaks lines either side like a paragraph. There is also a <br /> tag which we call “break row”. This is like a carriage return that and puts what follows onto the next line of the page. Within the HTML in this box there are also small snippets of Contact Form 7 code contained within square brackets “[".

  • Generate Tag

    • The drop-down list here allows you to create new snippets of code so that you can add other fields to your form. We'll go into these in greater detail later.

  • Mail -> To

    • The email address you use here needs to be one you will check for your contact form messages. You may prefer to use a contact email address that is not your normal address and you may also find it best to use an email address that is tied to your domain name. This email address is the one that is used when sending the email as well as receiving it and some web hosts will insist on using a domain associated email address to send mail.

  • Mail -> From

    • This will be the from line you get in your email when someone fills in your contact form. If you allow your visitors to fill in their name and email then you'll be able to reply to this contact form and reach them via email directly.

  • Mail -> Subject

    • This will appear as the subject line of the email you receive when someone fills in your contact form.

  • Mail -> Additional Headers

    • Leave this blank unless you understand how email headers work and why you might want to include additional information here.

  • Mail -> Use HTML content type

    • If you want to include HTML in your email you should click this box. If you leave this box unchecked your email will come through as plain text.

  • Mail -> Message Body

    • To see the information your visitors have given in their form you need to have a each of your Contact Form 7 mail tags inside the body of your email so that you will see the result they send you. You can add other information here and it will be included in the body of the email message you receive.

  • Mail 2

    • This is an advanced mail option. Usually you will leave this unchecked.

  • Messages

    • These default messages appear as different events happen with your form. You can customize your messages if you choose to do so however these default messages usually contain enough information to assist your visitors.

  • Additional Settings

    • This is another advanced feature. We will discuss your options for this field later.

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