How to Create a Contact Form with Contact Form 7

What is Contact Form 7?

Contact Form 7 is the most popular plugin for creating contact forms on websites, thanks to being lightweight, convenient and reliable at delivering submissions. Even so, users sometimes struggle to install and use it.

Install Contact Form 7

Before installing Contact Form 7, set up an SMTP mail server so your site can send email.

1. Go to Dashboard → Plugins → Add New
2. Search for “Contact Form 7”
3. Click Install → Activate

Configure Contact Form 7

Step 1: Click Settings under Contact Form 7

Click Settings under Contact Form 7 on your list of installed plugins.

Step 2: Create a new form

Click Add New if you have not created a form yet, or edit an existing form.

Step 3: Configure Contact Form 7

Form tab: the form content

• Enter title here: the name of the contact form
• [your-name]: you can relabel this as “Full name”
• [your-email]: you can relabel this as “Your email”
• [your-subject]: the subject of the enquiry
• [your-message]: the content of the enquiry
• [submit]: the submit button. You can change “Send” to something like “Submit”

Click Save.

Mail tab: email settings

• To: the address that receives contact emails (for example: email@tada.vn)
• From: the sending address (must be an address on your own domain, for example: wordpress@your-domain)
• Subject: the email subject (for example: Contact form)
• Additional headers: lets you add Cc or Bcc
• Message body: customise which fields are included, using tags such as [your-name] [your-email] [your-subject] [your-message]

You could write something like: “Thank you, [your-name], for contacting us. We have received your message and will get back to you within 2 working hours.”

Tick Mail (2) if you want to send a second email at the same time as the main one, typically an automatic confirmation to the person who filled in the form. Mail (2) is not a backup: it is sent alongside the first email, not instead of it when the first one fails.

Messages tab

Edit the messages shown in different situations.

Click Save.

Step 4: Add the form to a post or page

Once the form is designed and configured, copy its shortcode and paste it into a post or page to display the contact form.

Step 5: Check the result

Create a post or page, paste the shortcode, and check that the form displays correctly.