Reviewing Contact Forms for Wordpress

Exploring Built-In Form Features

This is a tip for everybody. If you’re not getting much contact from your site visitors then perhaps it’s time to spruce up your contact forms and make it more attractive and easy to read. Let’s face it; some contact forms look so bad you really don’t want to use them.

Some of these contact solutions exist as a built-in feature in WordPress. One of the best available options is to use TDO Mini Forms. This plug-in can add themed custom posting and editing forms to your website that allows your readers, including those who are not registered, to contribute.

Using this plug-in allows you to add highly customizable forms that work with your WordPress Theme to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit and edit posts and pages. New posts are kept in "draft" until an admin can publish them (also configurable).

Best of all, TDO Mini Forms has been used to turn WordPress into a Forum, Contact Manager.

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My Vote for the Best Plug-In

After doing some extensive research online, I have determined that the plug-in available is CformsII. CformsII is a highly customizable, flexible and powerful form builder WordPress plug-in, covering a variety of use cases and features from attachments to multi form management; you can even have multiple forms on the same page.

Here are some of the main features of the CformII plug-in:

• 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.

Overall, CformsII makes life easier on both the user and the developer.

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Choosing Easy Yet Effective Plug-Ins

Despite everything that I have read about WordPress, it is not any sort of magical content management system, although it does provide a slew of possibilities in the right hands. Even if the possibilities are there, I will not recommend installing massive quantities of plug-ins just to ramp up your site. In these cases, less is not only better overall, but also more effective.

One of the easiest plug-ins available for Wordpress is the Visitor Contact form. To use this plugin, you need to create a contact form at the home site for the plug-in (see above link). After that, just fill in your form ID to the plugin page and you are done. There are a lot of cool features, such as Geocoding, Captcha Spam Protection, Contact Manager, Skype Status and much more. The options are unlimited.

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But don’t just take my word for it. See for yourself. Selecting a plug-in for forms is all about discovering what fits your comfort level. Good luck and happy coding!