Secure & accessible contact form for WordPress + multi-user version

April 15, 2007 | Published in: Wordpress & plugins | Tags: , , , , 200
Updated: July 11, 2010

This plugin has now been updated for WordPress 3.0 - See this post for the new version: http://blue-anvil.com/archives/secure-accessible-contact-form-v2-1-for-wordpress/

Wordpress Contact formsThe ‘Secure and accessible contact form for wordpress’ has been a huge success (over 10,000 downloads!), and due to this I have decided to repost the plugin (and also its less known multi-user sister version) to further increase the popularity of this awesome plugin for the wordpress blogging platform.

The Secure & accessible contact form is designed to make contacting you from your website easy, accessible, and secure. It will definitely deter spam emails from arriving in your mail box!


What is it?

Well, this could well be the best, most accessible, spam proof contact form available, and its now a wordpress plugin!

Based on the PHP contact forms by Mike Cherim, Mike C and I have developed a fully configurable, spam-proof, wordpress contact form plugin.

This plugin lets you add a contact form to a wordpress page or a template, and after configuration, works a treat. It is fully customisable with CSS, and even has a few themes contained to get you started.

Documentation & the readme file is included in the zip, and the help file will show in your wordpress control panel too.

Admin/form Screenshots

Admin screenshot 1 Admin screenshot 2 Form screenshot

You can see this plugin in action on my contact page.

The multi-user version

We have a multi-user version available (for use, for example, if you have multiple departments each wanting separate messages) which costs just $70, and is great for small organisations with multiple recipients.

Multi-user version

You can see this multi-user plugin in action here.

Plugin Features

The PHP form itself, its accessibility and usability features can be found on its official page here, but here are some plugin specific features and some highlights.

  • Easy to use form Overview page, with config information, and spam count.
  • Great security measures implemented, to prevent spam and high-jacking.
  • Form designed with accessibility and usability in mind.
  • Standards compliant code and form, with XHTML and HTML strict support.
  • Simple setup, with helpful prompts and extensive documentation.
  • Configuration built into the wordpress interface, no need to edit any code manually.
  • Easy to style, either using your own CSS files, are in-built editor, or a pre-made theme for the most popular wordpress themes.

Plugin update history

The plugin was released on the 25th October 2006, and has been updated and maintained since. For old update logs see the old post, as newer updates are being listed here only.

  • 31st July 2008v.2.0WP B20080731 – General Fixes and updates.
  • 7th Feb 2008v.2.0WP B20080207 – Mike C moved the labels, reduced their length, spanned the legends, added 3D to make a working Whois query input. Plus I used a couple of WP functions to wptexturize() and autop() the page output. Most changes were for greater accessibility.
  • 14th April 2007v.2.0WP B20070414 – Due to threats from a disgruntled user Mike has removed all link-backs in the wp-gbcf_form.php file if Showcredit “No” is selected in the config. The documentation file, wp-gbcf_help.php, was also updated. Recommendation: Swap out the wp-gbcf_form.php and wp-gbcf_help.php files. This was never meant to dupe or spam anyone. It was used purely for software promotion and innocuous tracking.

Get the plugin now!

Normal version – B20080731

Terms of Use: You are free to download and use this form but you may not redistribute it without written permission. Donations are gratefully accepted but no payment is required to use this script. If you do use this form whether on your site or a client’s site, it is requested that you keep the built in link-back in place but it is no longer required by these terms.

Download the Contact form

Downloaded a total of 18883 times from Blue Anvil.

German Version Available

German Version released Nov. 4th, 2006, translated by: “Monika Thon-Soun” Danke!

Download German Contact Form | Download Deutsche Kontaktform

Multi-user version – B20070414

The multi-user version can be bought via paypal for $70 and will be sent via email in zip format, so please remember to provide your email address either via paypal or by contacting us.


Plugin Installation

Installation is fast and easy, it basically entails unzipping the folder, uploading and activating, and adding a tag to a wordpress page! Simple. Full instructions are found in the readme file within the plugin download file.

Additional template tag: There is also an alternate templating method of installation. A little more involved but better in its flexibility if you are having problems with the page tag method of including the form.

Plugin Supported Themes

If you use some of the more popular
href=”http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/”>WordPress Themes
, contact
form themes have been provided to get you up-and-running faster than ever.

The following WordPress themes have been provided for (use these links to
get info or download them):

Default by Michael Heilemann
The default WordPress theme based on the famous Kubrick. Included with WordPress.
Classic by Dave Shea
The original WordPress theme that graced versions 1.2.x and prior. Also included
Beast-Blog by Mike Cherim
Beast-Blog Info |
Beast-Blog Demo |
href=”http://green-beast.com/logger_dl.php”>Download Beast-Blog
.
Almost Spring by Becca Wei
Almost Spring
Info
|
href=”http://themes.beccary.com/index.php?wptheme=Almost+Spring”>Almost
Spring Demo
|
href=”http://beccary.weblogs.us/almost-spring.zip”>Download Almost
Spring
.
Blix by Sebastian
Schmieg
Blix
Info
| Blix Demo |
href=”http://www.kingcosmonaut.de/blix/download/Blix-0.9.1.zip”>Download
Blix
.
Connections by Patricia
Muller
Connections Info |
Connections Demo |
href=”http://www.vanillamist.com/blog/files/connections.zip”>Download
Connections
.
Green Marinee by Ian Main
Green Marinee Info |
href=”http://e-lusion.com/greenmarinee/”>Green Marinee Demo
|
href=”http://e-lusion.com/greenmarinee/greenmarinee-1.0.1.zip”>Download
Green Marinee
.
Ocadia by Becca Wei
Ocadia Info |
Ocadia Demo |
href=”http://beccary.weblogs.us/ocadia.zip”>Download Ocadia
.
Pool by Borja
Fernandez
Pool Info |
Pool Demo |
href=”http://www.lamateporunyogur.net/misc/pool-v107.zip”>Download
Pool
.
SeaBeast by Mike Cherim
SeaBeast Info |
href=”http://green-beast.com/seabeast/”>SeaBeast Demo
|
href=”http://green-beast.com/seabeast/download/”>Download SeaBeast
.

Note: This theme has an included contact form but it
can be disabled in its
href=”http://green-beast.com/seabeast/?page_id=44″>configuration
and
deleted and this one used instead for great security and flexibility. Also
note this theme’s special
href=”http://green-beast.com/seabeast/?page_id=16″>terms and conditions

for use.

Update:
Beginning with build number 20070204 a large number of random themes have been added for you to play around with.

Credits

This plugin was created by Me (Mike Jolley) and Mike Cherim, and was based on Mike C’s initial PHP contact forms.

Mike Cherim also has a page dedicated to this plugin, find it here.

Support our sweat, blood and tears

I know, that sounds gross, but we really did put ALOT of effort in to this plugin to make it the best. If you like this plugin, or it has benefited you, please make a donation via paypal! Any amounts are welcome, we will split it between us (Cherim & Jolley). Your support is much appreciated.

Send a donation

*This link will take you to green-beast.com where you can use Mike’s paypal button to send a donation

Disclaimer

You are free to use this application but may not redistribute it without written permission. Use of this application will be at your own risk. No guarantees or warranties are made, direct or implied. The creators cannot and will not be liable or held accountable for damages, direct or consequential. By using this application it implies agreement to these conditions.

Found this post useful? Why not buy me a coffee!

Related Entries

200 Responses to “Secure & accessible contact form for WordPress + multi-user version”

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. brian wright says:

    Hi! I have installed the form and it seems to be working on the page, but I never receive the email. I’ve tried too separate addresses; one at Yahoo and one at Gmail, but have not received an email from this form at either address.

    I’m running the form on WordPress 2.1.3, using the page design from vanillamist.com, on my home server running on Apache on OS X.

    I previously tried Ryan Duff’s form with the same results, so I wonder if it has something to do with my setup.

    Any ideas?

    Thanks!

    Comment made on April 25, 2007 at 5:17 am

  2. Mike Jolley says:

    You should check you have the mail() function enabled.

    When I ran WAMP (apache, mysql, php) on my home server, it wouldent send mail to the outside web. So My guess is that its a config problem with the server.

    Comment made on April 25, 2007 at 9:21 am

  3. bobby says:

    Yeah im having the same problem too, can it have something to do with the build version? i dont have problems with any other app that uses mail() on the server.

    Comment made on April 25, 2007 at 7:01 pm

  4. Mike Jolley says:

    Try asking the host why it might not be sendng, in most cases it is the host’s fault because of server config.

    Comment made on April 25, 2007 at 7:59 pm

  5. Leonardo Fontenelle says:

    It would be great if the plugin was localizable/translatable. If you are able to work on this, please make sure it doesn’t break Gengo:

    http://wp-multilingual.net/download-gengo/compatibility/en/

    Comment made on April 28, 2007 at 4:32 pm

  6. Josh says:

    Mike, Thanks for the great plugin. I was able to solve my ‘not sending mail’ issue with adding the following lines to wp-gbcf_form.php:

    ini_set(“SMTP”,”mail.yourdomain.com”);
    ini_set(“smtp_port”,”25″);
    ini_set(“sendmail_from”,”fromYou@typeyourdomainhere.com”);

    It seems that my host does not set these for security reasons. Perhaps in a future version of your plugin you could add these as configurable fields on your admin page.

    Thanks again for your hard work.

    Comment made on May 4, 2007 at 3:44 pm

  7. Mike Jolley says:

    Excellent, if in doubt, always blame the host :)

    Comment made on May 4, 2007 at 4:33 pm

  8. Mike Cherim says:

    I really appreciate this being brought up, Josh. That has long been a potential fix for our forms when placed on a server hosted by a company that disables the mail function, I mean ini_set() has been something I’ve been aware of. But I haven’t implemented that due to a potential conflict of interest.

    The thing is the mail function is enabled by default, so for it to be disabled it is something the host has done. I feel uncomfortable overriding the host’s settings. As an web host myself, I wouldn’t want someone overriding my server settings because a particular domain wants to do something that I disallow. This presents a conflict in my eyes.

    I guess what I’d like to encourage users to do, instead of applying this config-overriding code, is to talk to their host and get permission and maybe have them make the changes to the php.ini file themselves.

    I’m not sure, though. This is something I’ve been debating for a while and I’m open to more discussion about it, especially from other web hosts. How do you feel about it?

    Comment made on May 4, 2007 at 5:43 pm

  9. Anthony Brewitt says:

    I agree, Blame the host!

    Comment made on May 15, 2007 at 10:10 am

  10. Kay says:

    How about adding the code to the form, commenting it out, and then let the users that are savvy enough switch it on manually?

    That would prevent people turning it on indiscriminately, but still allow others that have to deal with paranoid server admins to use the form.

    Comment made on May 17, 2007 at 2:15 am

  11. Deborah says:

    I have installed the plugin, which works great. I checked through the documentation, but couldn’t find how to remove several of the fields I don’t want to include in the form. I’d like to remove the phone number, website address, select a reason for contacting. Basically, I’d like to have a form similar to this one for my site.

    How can I alter the fields that appear in the form? Did I miss the information in the documentation? I browsed through about 10 pages of comments in the original post on your site, but didn’t find anything.

    Comment made on May 28, 2007 at 3:12 am

  12. Mike Jolley says:

    Deborah – You cannot do this with this version, for a customised version Myself or Mike can customise it for a fee.

    Comment made on May 28, 2007 at 4:03 pm

  13. Tutor says:

    Having a problem getting a contact me page to work, upon submitting I’m getting an “Referrer Missing or Mismatch: It looks like you’re trying to post remotely or you have blocked referrers on your user agent or browser. ” error (at least I think it’s an error lol) What is a Referrer? Thanks

    Comment made on June 17, 2007 at 1:00 am

  14. Tracey says:

    How can I remove the phone number field?

    Comment made on June 18, 2007 at 6:45 pm

  15. Mike Jolley says:

    Tutor – read the Help…

    Tracey – You cannot, unless you modify the plugin itself

    Comment made on June 18, 2007 at 9:32 pm

  16. Stephen Antonucci says:

    Is there a way to disable the display of my email when “an woops” happens? I NEVER want my email displayed.

    Comment made on June 24, 2007 at 3:44 pm

  17. developer says:

    $70 – i’m sure it’s well coded an all but how’d you come up with that figure?

    Evertything being relative – is it justified compared to an app like coda? which is about the same price?
    http://www.panic.com/coda/

    …no i don’t work for panic

    Comment made on June 28, 2007 at 10:53 am

  18. Mike Jolley says:

    I tell you what “developer”, why don’t you buy coda and code your own and see how much time that costs you!

    Comment made on June 28, 2007 at 12:53 pm

  19. Jonathan Ginsberg says:

    Mike:
    Is it possible to put your contact form in a sidebar widget? If so how does one do it?
    Jonathan

    Comment made on July 10, 2007 at 2:38 am

  20. Mike Jolley says:

    No its not sorry

    Comment made on July 14, 2007 at 8:33 pm

  21. yaramazadam says:

    I search it.But now I found it.thanks

    Comment made on July 15, 2007 at 3:37 pm

  22. Kunal says:

    Thank you for this great plugin. Really appreciated.

    Comment made on July 15, 2007 at 8:37 pm

  23. Margot says:

    I’m getting the same error as Tudor. It’s especially weird because it worked like a charm just a week ago, and now it keeps giving me this error all of the sudden. I haven’t changed any of my settings, either.

    Comment made on July 27, 2007 at 10:19 pm

  24. Bigwhite says:

    Hi ! First, thanks a lot for providing such a good plugin. Well, I have a question for you… :-)

    I am a french user so I would like to translate the english sentences on the form to french ones. What is best way to do this ? Of course, I would be glad to offer the translation to the WP community.

    Comment made on July 30, 2007 at 9:26 am

  25. Ugur SELAM says:

    Hi,

    My problem;
    Fatal error: Cannot access empty property in /home/kitapblo/public_html/yeni/wp-includes/functions.php on line 282
    :( :(

    i need you help :D

    Comment made on August 1, 2007 at 7:59 am

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