Top 3 Contact Form Wordpress Plugins for Your Contact Page
If you’re using mailto:your-mail-box links, it is not a wise move because your email will be scanned by spammer viruses. Contact form is one of the most effective anti-harvesting method from spammers. The contact form provides a textarea for the message, and an input for the sender’s e-mail address. The server-side script that processes the posted form data, is then responsible for sending the actual message, which means that the e-mail address of the recipient is never exposed.
If you’re using wordpress, you’re in luck. There’re many different wordpress plugins you can use to create a contact form to reduce spam. I’m including some of the most common ones below:
WP-ContactForm Akismet Edition
The basic purpose of WP-ContactForm Askimet Edition is to make it easy to have a “Contact Me” form on your WordPress blog. Additionally, if you have Akismet installed, all messages will be checked for “spaminess” before being sent to you, effectively keeping the spammers out of your face. The reason why I listed it here because I like the idea of this plugin as combining with Askimet. With this plugin you don’t need any annoying image verification codes or checks to see if the user is “human” or not. If anyone attempts to spam you, it will likely never reach your e-mail box. Only one note for you, this plugin is not currently compatible with WordPress 2.5. He said that he was going to update it but there’s no update since April 22, 2007
WordPress-Ready Contact Form
Wordpress-Ready Contact Form is an easy-to-install contact form with many accessibility, usability, and security features. If you use some of the more popular WordPress Themes such as Green Marinee, Connections, Ocadia, … contact form themes have been provided to get you up-and-running faster than ever. I’ve just noticed that Brian Gardner, owner of Revolution Themes is using this one.
CForms II
Cforms II is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder wordpress plugin, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments to multi form management, you can even have multiple forms on the same page! I personally use CForms II on my blog (you can see it live on my contact page) because I love its features. The only thing I do not like this plugin is its size (900KB+) then I do not update it regularly! Anyways I highly recommend this plugin for building your contact form.
Main features of cForm II plugin
- Customizable fields with optional checkboxes, radio buttons, …
- Several fancy “styles”, change the look of your form with a single click
- Create multiple contact forms and display them on however many pages you want.
- Tell-a-friend form support.
- Backup and restore custom forms to other sites.
- Visitor verification questions, along with CAPTCHA support
That’s about it. Hopefully you find my post interesting and if you have any other great plugins for me then I’d like to see them. Do not forget to subscribe to our feed to stay up to date with all of our free themes and tutorials!
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All the three are great Wordpress plugins..
i agree with you but don’t you think that cForms II is the best of them ?
Thanks so much for this wonderful wordpress plug-ins
I heard of the CForms II plugin but never heard of the Askiment one. I’ll definitely need to give the Askimet one a go since it’s been helpful in weeding out all the spam.
cForms II version 10 released with lots of new features and bugs fixed
# feature: “manual/help page” now also offered in form of a PDF (see help page)
# feature: enhanced Opera Browser support
# feature: complete admin UI update: WP2.7′ized it (code and CSS)
# feature: multi-part/-page form support
# feature: added dashboard support for WP 2.7
# feature: general enhancements on tracking page (time stamps on entries etc)
Kool!
I might try the cForms II later on. By the way your link is live. Congratulations!!!
Oh good! I was afraid you were going to say contact forms were a bad idea. I just put one on each of my blogs.
Nhc, Thanks for this list. I am right now using a different contact form plugin.
I will check out these mentioned plugins and see the difference.
I will go with cforms II only..
Contact7 is also popular
For Blogger Platform..kontactr.com forms rocks !!
cFormsII is the best for me so far. Contact7 got some error previously. I don’t know whether it is a good choice.
It’s a shame that the Askimet form plugin hasn’t kept up with the WP updates – just out of interest what are your thoughts on Contact Form 7?
I would agree with using cform. Its easy to handle and the input is fast.
My preferred WP Contact Form – Contact Form 7 as it is easy,simple and straight forward
I don’t like cform11 caused it is complicated
Am using Contact Form 7 for now. It seems to be simpler than cForm II.
Yup, more functions, more beautiful … means more complex
Thanks for this useful plugin, i have tested and using WordPress-Ready Contact Form right now and they did worked like a charm!
I’ve been using CForms II
Thanks for this great information mate….
I have not put in a contact page yet in my blog and have depended on emails from my readers. From what you say, it would be a good idea to and I shall do so soon. Thank you.
What one would be the easiest to install? I am useless at html and installing things and the person I usually ask to help me out is probably fed up by now with my endless requests.
I recommend WordPress-Ready Contact Form
I agree that cforms is great for a contact form, but has anyone seen it used as a frontend to automate posts to a blog? Now that would be a special bit of script
i use Akismet in my blog , so WP-ContactForm Akismet Edition will be ok for me , but you say that there was no update since April 22, 2007 and now i use wordpress 2.7 so better i use CForms II
CFORMII VERSION 10.1 (Mainly a maintenance release)
* feature: added form option to turn off tracking for a given form only
* bugfix: improved method of adding admin scripts/CSS (to better support preWP2.7 systems)
* bugfix: added UI CSS mods to accomodate pre WP2.7 admin interface
* bugfix: wrong dashboard icon extension (png vs gif)
* bugfix: hover text over AJAX option on ‘form settings’
* bugfix: multi-page forms: after final submission, form #1 on occcasion would render only partly
* bugfix: multi-page forms: if used with “WP comment form feature” at the same time, comment form would also be replaced with the current multi-part form
* bugfix: multi-page forms: when deploying several MP form series the SESSION would in some cases not be reset
* bugfix: in v10.0 access priviliges for tracking required to be “manage_cforms”
* other: fixed CommentLuv support
* other: WP2.7+ fixed admin UI : support for removeable top err/warning messages
* other: a few minor UI adjustments to accomodate 1024px wide screens a tad better
* other: some cosmetic icon adjustments
Great
Thank you for sharing this bud!!!!
^_______^
An important note:
In light of special circumstances, cformII will not continue to be available on wordpress.org. Future updates may only be available on http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin.
what special circumstances?
is this mean that no more updates in this plugin for wordpress blogs or for blogs which hosted in wordpress /
I see!!!!
That’s why I can’t find it @ wordpress.org….
Thanks for the update!!! ^_____^
You are most welcome ^______^
word press ready-contact form is the way to go. I would recommend it to everyone. Good info on the others as well.
CFormII VERSION 10.2 (GPL compliance!)
* bugfix: WP comment form : fixed issues when form #1 was enabled as WP comment form replacement
* bugfix: fixed Cross-site_scripting security hole (rarely to be exploited but anyway)
* bugfix: multi-part form: fixed issue, when first form is the default form (#1)
* bugfix: multi-part form: fixed escaped quotes when going back
* bugfix: textarea fields: fixed carriage returns in HTML part of admin email
* other: buttonsnap has been removed
I recommend using Contact Form that comes in wit wp-antispam. It rocks
VERSION 10.3 (features & bug fixes)
* feature: RSS feed: revised and enhanced feeds (all & indivudal form feeds)
supporting inclusion of form fields in the feed
* feature: new API function: cf_extra_comment_data( $id )
will retrieve all extra fields per given comment ID in a data [array]
see tutorial online (troubleshooting forum)
* feature: enhanced option to keep input field data (no reset) after submission
(both ajax & nonajax)
* feature: cforms allows now to optionally turn off the admin email (and only track via DB)
* feature: “redirect on success” can now be used to jump to any location on your page after form submission
* feature: threaded comment support for cforms’ WP comment feature
note: nonAjax will work as is, for the Ajax method you need to adjust your WP theme to work nicely with cforms (dynamically set the parent container!)
* bugfix: multi-part forms: no more session resets / jumping to first form
* bugfix: multi-part forms: confusion of prev. entered field values when going to previous form
* bugfix: escaped ‘< ' & '>‘ in input fields, which allows to properly send code in a form as well
* bugfix: a few admin CSS fixed (e.g. resizable text areas)
* other: smaller cosmetic fixes
* other: input field default values will now remain actual values and not be cleared!
Enjoy!
VERSION 10.4
* feature: new my_cforms_logic() features:
“adminEmailTXT” & “adminEmailHTML”, “autoConfTXT” & “autoConfHTML”
to support run-time changes in the email message part(s),
e.g. {user_variable} substitution supporting custom/one-off messages
* feature: tracking / download: revised and fixed downloads that include field headers
in several areas
* feature: tracking / download: added optional inclusion of attachment/file URLs
* feature: tracking / download: added optional inclusion of IP address in report
* feature: tracking / download: completely revised the tracking download function to
accommodate very large numbers of records, make sure that js/include/data.tmp
is writable!
* bugfix: fixed access to $subID from within my-functions.php for Ajax post method
* bugfix: file uploads/attachments: revised, better internal handling
* bugfix: file uploads/attachments: fixed link/URL issue for MP forms
* bugfix: file uploads/attachments: all files are now being attached to admin email for
MP forms
* bugfix: WP comment form: fixed email to author in non Ajax mode
* bugfix: Fixed “extra variables” (e.g. {Title}) to display again in admin email etc.
* bugfix: success message: fixed buggy message display (‘*$#..’) in special cases
* other: Javascript Date Picker updated to latest release
* other: admin emails: turned upper case HTML tags to lower case
* other: admin emails: swapped LF for CRLF (according to RFC822 Section 3)
VERSION 10.5
*) feature: redirect options: “hide” & “redirect” haven been split, allowing both
find ‘hide’ under ‘core options’ now
make sure to check both options, they may have been reset!
*) feature: email: supporting mail server that strictly require CRLF
new option under GlobalSettings > Mail Server Settings
*) bugfix: field labels that would have an escaped character (e.g quotes) would not be
referenced correctly and required a slash until now (e.g. {Your friend\’s Name} ).
*) bugfix: fixed minor XSS cross site scripting vulnerability
*) bugfix: select boxes: fixes the “auto select” of the last drop down option
*) bugfix: email: fixes CR’s in multi-line fields
*) bugfix: email: fixing SMTP / PHPMailer attachments
*) bugfix: email: MIME / boundary fix
*) bugfix: email: several cosmetic fixes
*) bugfix: WP comment: fixed Ajax submission of WP comments
*) bugfix: fixed get_cforms_entries() when using “form name” parameter
*) bugfix: fixed WP comment form ‘comment id not found’ error