Contact forms are still the preferred option to give site users a way of getting in touch with you on your website. They’re useful for troubleshooting purposes, as you can request whatever you want from your users, ensuring they provide us with enough information to address their concern.
Contact Form 7 has been one of the most popular plugins for this purpose over the past decade, which is why it’s trusted by millions of WordPress users. Let’s dive into how you can make the most of the Contact Form 7 plugin.
- How to Install Contact Form 7 Plugin
- How to Create a Form Using Contact Form 7
- How to Configure Contact Form 7 Mail Settings
How to Install Contact Form 7 Plugin
Contact Form 7 is totally free, and you can download and install it directly via WordPress directory. To do that, simply navigate to “Plugins” > “Add New” under your admin dashboard.
The Contact Form 7 plugin should be listed highly when you search “contact form” within your plugin section.
Press “Install Now”, then “Activate” to add the plugin to your site.
How to Create a Form Using Contact Form 7
When you activate the plugin, a new “Contact” section will be added to your admin dashboard panel. Click on “Contact”, and you’ll see a default form named “Contact Form 1”.
Click Edit button under the form title to adjust your form template, mail, and message settings.
Contact Form 7 plugin comes with a lot of custom tags allowing you to customize the form to your liking. In this example, we’ve required users to provide their telephone numbers.
Step 1: Click on the tel tag located above your form template
Step 2: Customize the input field
- Tick the “Required field” checkbox if you’d like to
- Give your field a name
- Determine the default value
- Add ID attribute and Class attribute if need be
Once you’re happy with your settings, press “Insert Tag”.
Step 3: Customize field label
Simply wrap your tags within <label> code as follows:
<label> Your telephone number
[tel* tel-80] </label>
Now all you need to do is copy the contact form shortcode and embed it to the place you want to display the form on your site.
Your contact form will look like this:
Feel free to customize the looks of your form accordingly. Now, let’s look at how to configure Contact Form 7 mail settings.
How to Configure Contact Form 7 Mail Settings
By default, your users just receive a confirmation message after form submission. All emails are set to be sent to the site admin’s email addresses.
If you want to send users emails after form submissions, you need to adjust the settings in the Mail tab under your form settings.
We’ll walk you through the usage of the listed fields so that you can understand what they’re used for.
#1. To field: Address where confirmation emails will be sent.
We usually use the [your-email] mail tag here. Confirmation emails will be sent to users’ provided emails.
#2 From field: Set sender email address here.
Please note that the email should be associated with your website domain. For example, our website is https://passwordprotectwp.com/, then the sender email should be something like hello@passwordprotectwp.com.
Otherwise, you’ll see the configuration error as follows:
If you haven’t had an email with your domain name, just create one. If not, your users will find no way to reply and communicate with you.
#3. Subject field: Define your email subject here.
By default, Contact Form 7 gets your users’ entered subjects, so make sure to define your own one here.
#4. Additional headers field: Add Cc or Bcc recipients of your email here.
#5. Message body field: Customize your message body here.
Feel free to include what you want to tell your users, e.g. your company info, guidelines, etc.
#6. File attachment field: Attach files that you want to send your submitted users here.
Bonus: A Great Application of Contact Form 7
You can apply Contact Form 7 in many different use cases – one of the most common is sending users passwords or Quick Access Links (QALs) to access your protected content after form submissions.
This comes in handy when you want to sell access to your content, or give your users a gift to encourage them to submit forms. To do this, you need PPWP Pro and its PPWP Forms Integration activated on your site.
When activated, you’ll see a new PPWP Pro section added to your contact form settings page as follows.
Here you can configure all settings such as protected pages, password restrictions, and confirmation messages here.
Once a user submits the form, they’ll receive a confirmation email containing a unique password/QAL to open your protected content. These passwords or links will expire, depending on preset time or clicks.
Manage Contact Form 7 Like a Pro
In this article, we’ve walked you through how to configure Contact Form 7 mail settings. By default, your users won’t receive any emails after submitting forms. Thus, don’t forget to adjust the settings accordingly to benefit from confirmation emails.
We’ve also introduced you to a powerful plugin that integrates well with the Contact Form 7 plugin – PPWP Pro. With this tool, you can protect your content with a click and automatically send passwords to access the protected content right after Contact Form 7 submissions.
