Using Contact Form 7

Contact Form 7 is a handy WordPress plugin that allows visitors to contact you
directly from your WordPress site.

Prerequisites:

  • Contact Form 7 plugin activated on your WordPress site.
  • Akismet plugin activated. This allows you to add Spam Filtering to your Contact Forms.

Add or Edit an existing contact form

  1. From the WordPress site’s dashboard, click Contact in the left-hand menu. If you do not see it, make sure you activate the Contact Form 7 plugin on your WordPress site.
  2. Click Add New or click on the name of an existing Contact Form to edit it.
  3. Add/edit your form on the Form tab. Below is a screenshot showing a simple Contact 7 Form with Name, Email Address, Subject, and Message fields
  4. Edit the email template on the Mail tab.

Contact Form 7 Best Practices

If you use a Contact Form on your WordPress site, whether you are building
it directly or copying from a site template, it is recommended to follow the
guidelines below to ensure your form is secure, resilient against spam, and
works correctly.

  • Make sure your email address or the site owner email template variable
    [_site_admin_email] is specified in the “To” and “Reply To” fields. This ensures
    that any contact messages will be delivered to you as the site owner.
  • If you manage multiple WordPress sites with Contact Forms, you should
    add the site URL variable [_site_url], and the page URL variable [_url] to the
    email footer in order to distinguish the WordPress site. You can also add
    the site title variable [_site_title] to the email footer or in the “Subject” field
    along with the actual subject provided by the person filling the form.
  • Make sure you add spam filtering to your form. We have the Akismet
    plugin installed and enabled in our WordPress network for this purpose.
    The Akismet workflow stops a form from being submitted and displays
    an error if it determines that a spammer is submitting the form. Detailed
    information on how to use Akismet with Contact Form 7 can be found at
    https://contactform7.com/spam-filtering-with-akismet. The following are some of the main fields that can and should be secured with Akismet Spam filtering.

    • Name: The name of the person submitting the contact form; use the Akismet tag: akismet:author

    • Email: The email address of the person submitting the contact form;

      use Akismet tag: akismet:author_email

    • URL: If the form requests the person to provide the URL of their personal or other website; use Akismet tag: akismet:author_url

  • This is how you might use these Akismet tags on a simple contact form: