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Contact Form 7 FAQ

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(日本語の FAQ はこちら)

Where is the settings page for Contact Form 7?

Log into WordPress and open Settings > Contact Form 7.

Update: It’s in Manage > Contact Form 7 since Contact Form 7 1.8.

Update: WordPress 2.7 moved the page to Tools > Contact Form 7.

How can I add a contact form into my post content?

Open the settings page for Contact Form 7, and then open the contact form you want to add.

Each contact form has its own tag, such as [contact-form 1 "My contact form"]. To insert the contact form into your post, copy the tag and paste it into the post content.

How can I add a field to my contact form?

To add a field, add a tag to the Form textarea.

Each tag has a strict syntax, supporting several options (see Contact Form 7 Tag Syntax).

Learning the syntax might be difficult, but you can easily make a custom tag by using the tag generator instead. Click Generate Tag and simply select the options you’re interested in.

Nothing shows up in the email, even after adding a tag to the form! How can I include a new field’s input in the email?

You need to add a new tag to the Mail fields. This tag should correspond to the tag in the Form you wish to include in the email. Thus, when you add a new form tag such as [text your-new-field], the corresponding email tag would be [your-new-field]. Only the second part of the tag (“your-new-field”, in this case) is needed for the email.

A tag in the Mail field will be replaced with the user’s input contained in a form field with the same name.

I get emails containing codes such as `[foobar]`. What’s this? I want to see the user’s input.

See above. In this case, no form tag corresponds to the [foobar] email tag. A tag in the Mail field which has no corresponding tag in the Form will be left without replacement.

How can I specify a subject for the email?

Simply edit the Subject field in the Mail section (not in the Form section).

Can I place a contact form outside a post?

Yes. You may place a contact form in a text widget as well.

Can I embed a contact form into my template file?

No, this functionality is not yet supported.

After submitting the form, I get an error message stating “Failed to send your message”. What is wrong?

There could be two causes for this. The first is actual mail server trouble, where email cannot be sent. In this case, the error message would be surrounded with a RED border line. Contact your server admin.

The second possible cause is that the form content is classified as spam by Akismet. In this case, the error message would be surrounded with a YELLOW border line.

I get an error message with a red border. So, how can I solve this?

There are really various reasons for server side problems, so I can’t explain exactly what yours is. But experiences of other users who solved their problem might be helpful for you.

Mario Vargas says he solved a mail-related problem with WP-Mail-SMTP plugin.

I see a response message “Your message was sent successfully” with green border, but I never receive a mail for that.

Showing the green border message means that the PHP function for sending the mail has certainly completed successfully. So if you can’t receive the mail, it’s highly possible that the mail has been kidnapped or killed after that.

If you can check the log of your mail server, it could give you some clues. Spam filter often causes this kind of problem.

The spinning arrow icon shows up once I submit a form, but then nothing happens.

This is most probably due to a conflict between plugins. Try deactivating all other plugins.

My contact form behaves oddly on certain browsers.

This may be caused due to invalid HTML, CSS, or Javascript. Please check your form page with a validator or debugging tool.

Useful tools:
Firebug — Firefox extension. Good for Javascript debugging.
XHTML-CSS Validator — A validator with a good UI.

I want to use contact form in my language, not in English. How can I do that?

Contact Form 7 has been translated into many languages. See if the languages folder contains a language file for your language.

The locale setting of Contact Form 7 follows the locale setting of WordPress. Once you change the WordPress locale to, Contact Form 7 is also changed. See how to change the WordPress locale here.

CAPTCHA does not work; the image does not show up.

To use CAPTCHA, you need GD and FreeType library installed on your server. Also, the contact-form-7/captcha/tmp folder must be writable.

Contact Form 7 1.8 and later require wp-contents/uploads/wpcf7_captcha folder writable, instead of contact-form-7/captcha/tmp.

Update (2009/03/23): Contact Form 1.9.4 and later refers your upload folder setting in Settings > Miscellaneous menu for resolving the base directory for CAPTCHA’s temporary folder. So it may not use wp-contents/uploads/wpcf7_captcha. For example, when your upload folder is set “wp-content/myfiles”, CAPTCHA temp files will be created in wp-content/myfiles/wpcf7_captcha, so you need to make that folder writable.

CAPTCHA’s text input box is working on Internet Explorer, but not with Firefox. I cannot enter the code.

This is a well-known issue caused by misusing the <label> element. Make sure you are using it correctly.

This is good:

[captchac your-captcha] <label>Enter the code: [captchar your-captcha]</label>

This will not work correctly:

<label>[captchac your-captcha] Enter the code: [captchar your-captcha]</label>

File upload & file attachment do not work.

See this post.

File uploading and attachment with Contact Form 7

Tags Contact Form 7, FAQ

440 replies on “Contact Form 7 FAQ”

Very nice plugin, but having problem with my tags.

Before Contact 7 i had:

Tags: tag 1, tag 2, tag 3, etc

After Contact 7 i’ve:

Read more »Tags: tag 1, tag 2, tag 3, etc

Any suggestion?
You can see it on drinkadrink.com
Thanks :)

alessio, I suggest you check your site with XHTML validator. There are many parsing errors. They may be the causes of the issue.

Is there a way to have the contents of the form mailed without putting every checkbox and radio box into the mail section?
Like a catchall tag or a way to loop all the fields?
Thanks, great plugin

Hi, and thanks for your plugin.
I would like to know if there is a tag where the plugin would put the “Thanks” message that, otherwise, is outputted just after the [ contact-form ] tag.

Many thanks.

Hi – great plugin, but it my html is no longer validating. Apparently, it’s dropping the last tag from each post (right before bookmarkify is inserted), on any page – even those without forms. If I deactivate your plugin the last returns again.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

fuzzie, unfortunately it does not support such ways. But interesting idea.

paolo, I have added it into the to-do list of the next version. It will be released in two or three months, maybe. Please wait it.

Brad, I recommend that you use XHTML-CSS Validator.

form emails great but just spins and never confirms message is sent. If anyone finds a fix dave@davehome.org
I tried cforms II and got the same results so I think its a setting elsewhere.

dave, same issue as this?

https://ideasilo.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/contact-form-7/#comment-7459

Aren’t you using Swift SMTP plugin?

Hi!
After submitting the form, I get an error message stating “Validation errors occurred. Please confirm the fields and submit it again.”. What is wrong?
My contact form http://worldofrihanna.com/contact-us/

[textarea address x4] is all I get when I submit the form with the new field. I try to ad an address field, i tried everything its not working

Hello
How could i make a choice list in my form. Thank for this efficiency plugin.

regards

Jaco, there is a FAQ topic for you.
Nothing shows up in the email, even after adding a tag to the form! How can I include a new field’s input in the email?

denaska, add a drop down menu into your form. You can make a drop down menu from Create Tag button.

Miyoshi-san,

when I add a new contact form, it is correctly translated to my language. However, the default contact form – created when the plugin is activated – is always in english. It seems the locale or gettext domain are not properly set by the time the set_initial funtion is called. Do you know any workaround for this?

Thank you

Henrique, the set_initial() is called only once when the plugin is activated. So if you set the locale as English when you have activated the plugin, the default contact form remains in English after that. You should edit or remove the default one manually.

And also, the data in the options table in the database is not cleared when the plugin is unactivated. Next time you reactivate it, set_initial() sees the old data and try to reuse it no matter what locale is set at the moment.

Thanks Miyoshi-san. I tested with a fresh installation of WP. The locale is set to ‘pt_BR’, but still when I activate the plugin the default contact form is in English. The forms I add after that are correctly translated, so it’s not that much of a problem anyway, just to let you know.

Great idea, my only issue is that it seems to severely slow down the load time of the site since installing it???

Suggestion – add a sound button thing alternative for the captcha so those visually impaired can submit a form if captcha is used

Hello,

Is it possible to set the width of a select drop down list?

Henrique, I confirmed the issue and fixed it in v1.7.8. Please try it. Thank you!

Dan, you can do that by editting your CSS stylesheet.

when somebody sends a email using this form and puts in their email address which is required it never shows their email in the email but my email address at my domain

from
to me@gmail.com
date Mon, Jul 14, 2008 at 12:12 AM
subject hello

In the form i used a different email other than webmaster@somewhere.com but no matter what email i put in the from it always shows the same. Other than that it does send the email to the proper address but I will never know who is sending the email unless this can be fixed

so there is no confusion. No matter what email i put in the from in the form it always shows my email at my domain and I have no way to see who it came from and to reply to it

Well never mind i found out what the problem was. I had another plugin that changed my wordpress from email address when people registered. I deactivated that plugin and the mail form works great.

Thanks you for the very good plugin. Unfortunatly, when I send a messsage from the contact form, I don’t receive it on the specified adress. I have this problem with others contact form plugins I have tested. Could you help me ?

please do not consider my first message, the plugin runs very well now ! It’s great, thank you very much !!

Miyoshi-san, I just tried the new v1.7.8 and it works perfectly now! Thank you!

After a little CSS tweaking and a read through your help pages, it’s working great. Love this plugin, thanks!

Love the pluggin…!

I’m having trouble with the radio buttons though. It won’t let me select one option. It always defaults to the first option.

Am I doing something wrong?

THANKS!

narcolepsynetwork, aren’t you wrapping the radio tag with <label> element? If so, it is a wrong use of <label> and it does cause the trouble.

AH! I’m going to try breaking out of the LABEL then! Thank you so much!

I have installed your plugin on my blog, but I do not work, then do not send emails. I have installed WordPress 2.5.1 please help me

bikek, 1) do you see an error after you submit the form? 2) do you receive other mails, such as comment notifications, from your WordPress?

Hey, this is a fantastic app – thank you!

I am having one problem only recently. I’ve gotten captcha to work before but now I get the following when I enable captcha and set the rights on the tmp directory.

Warning: imagettftext() [function.imagettftext]: Could not read font in /home/otaypetv/public_html/wp/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/captcha/captcha.php on line 60

It prints this four times.

Any ideas that might help?

Thanks

marglar, are there font files (Gen****.TTF) in captcha/gentium folder? Are they readable?

Yes, there are four of them and they all are 644 – so they are readable.

Hmm… do you know what the trigger is? Didn’t you do automatic upgrading before that? It might cause problems.

Great contact form! I just spent the past day testing every contact form on wordpress.org and decided to go with this one.

Thanks. I guess it was the auto-update that broke it.

I reinstalled the files new, and it works perfectly once again.

Great plugin. Its a default on all the sites I build!

i inseredt a dropdown menu in my form, but the results don’t appear in the email. I know I need to add a new tag to the Mail fields but I don’t know what kind of tags is right? Here is my dropdown code from the Form section:

Category
[select* Category “Seeking Housing” “Seeking Services” “Seeking Jobs” “Seeking Merchandise” “Offering Housing” “Offering Services” “Offering Jobs” “Offering Merchandise”]

Thanks for any help! :)

JANE, [Category] is the right tag.

This plugin is outrageously awesome! Thanks for putting it out there.
I have one question. How can a person change the styling of the validation “Please fill the required field.” messages.

nvm. Found the style sheets in the plugins directory.

Im getting this error

Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagettftext() in /home/baby/public_html/girly/wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/captcha/captcha.php on line 60

sorry for disturbing!

jays, this seems to be the same case.

https://ideasilo.wordpress.com/2008/08/12/contact-form-7-18/#comment-7774

To solve the problem I downloaded the original ZIP file myself and FTP uploaded the font files to wp-content/plugins/contact-form-7/captcha/gentium/.

Sorry for the inconvenience. I’m considering how this should be fixed.

The best and simplest contact form plugin!

Cheers!

i seem to all of a sudden be having a problem, the from and name fields are being populated with my own info (“anthony” and “anthony@mydomain”) not the user entered info. the form worked for almost a year now so it is strange. any ideas?
thanks so much!

anthony, are you using other plugins about mailing? What is the current From field in Contact Form 7’s settings? And thank you for using such long time!