Contact Form

Contents

• Additional Info
• Troubleshooting

Related

• 404 Not Found error
• Archives Shortcode
• Autosave
• Code
• Deleted Posts and Pages
• Editing With Multiple Authors
• Editors
• Microsoft Word
• Missing Visual Editor
• Offline Editing
• Pages
• Post by Email
• Post vs. Page
• Posts
• Press This
• Proofreading
• Publicize
• Ratings
• ScribeFire
• Smilies
• Splitting Content
• Trash
• Visual Editor
• Write a Book

A contact form is a great way to offer your readers the ability to get in touch, without giving out your personal email address. And it’s easy to add! Just type the following into any post or page on your blog :

[contact-form]
(Do not copy and paste it in the visual editor, that won’t work)

After publishing, a simple contact form asking for the sender’s name, email address, website and message will be displayed.

If the visitor is already logged into WordPress.com, their profile information will be used and the contact form will be similar to the image below.

When someone submits a message through the form, you receive that message in an email.

Additional Info

• Your email address is never shown, and the sender never learns it (unless you reply to the email!).
• All contact form messages are filtered through Akismet, so the amount of spam you receive will be minimal, if not zero.
• Visitors can type anything into the name and email boxes, so it is easy to fake an identity. If a logged-in WordPress.com user sends you a message, the email will tell you that it was sent by a verified user and you can trust the name and email. As with anything online, know that anonymity is both a curse and a blessing :)
• The contact form cannot be used in the sidebar.
• You can include any text or other allowed elements above or below the contact form.
• If you have Custom CSS, you can customize the look of the form. You cannot add/remove form fields from the contact form, however.
• The email is sent to the author of the post or page with the contact form in it. So each author on your blog can have his or her own contact form. You could have a Links Widget with links to each author’s contact page, or at the bottom of each post add text link such as “Please contact me here if you wish.”

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Troubleshooting

If you’re having trouble receiving messages, try these:

• Make sure your message is not caught by Akismet or your email spam filter. Avoid super short messages (e.g. just entering “test”) or words that may be considered as spam.
• Try logging out from WordPress.com and use a different email address.

Last modified: February 9, 2010