What is Contact Form 7?

Contact Form 7 is one of the oldest and most popular WordPress contact form plugins. It’s incorporation in WordPress integrated many distinctive features to it.

Text input fields are the most common feature that Contact Form 7 has to offer. There are two types of HTML elements for text input fields: single-line input and multi-line input. Contact Form 7 offers several types of form-tags representing the two types of HTML elements; some include text field, email field, telephone number field, a URL field, and text area.

Another unique Contact Form 7’s feature is the number fields. Contact Form 7 provides two types of form-tag for numbers fields, namely, number and range.

Both of these form-tags work the same but give the user interface that they offer is different. These new form-tag types correspond with HTML5 input types, number, and range, respectively. Contact Form 7 also supports the date and <em>date*</em> types of form-tag that correspond with the date input type. HTML5 earlier introduced the date input type and the browsers that support this input type render a date field as a calendar-themed UI that allows you to choose a date.

In addition to that, Contact Form 7 lays out a variety of form-tags that represent radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop-down menus. The radio bar represents a group of radio buttons. Due to the requirement of radio buttons, a radio form-tag works as a required field. As far as the checkboxes are concerned, both the checkbox and checkbox* bars constitute a group of checkboxes. The checkbox* bar requires the user to select at least one of the given boxes.

Contact Form 7 also incorporates a feature that allows your users to upload their desired files via your form, and later on, you get an email with the attachment of the files. To attain this, you’ll need to incorporate file uploading fields in your form and tweak your mail settings that support the uploaded files’ attachment.

reCAPTCHA grants you protection from spam and other forms of automated abuse. Contact Form 7s reCAPTCHA integration module ensures you can block forms that are submitted by spambots. Furthermore, Contact Form 7 enables you to insert a CAPTCHA of your own into your contact form to prevent bots from submitting forms.

Contact Form 7 also promotes the use of the quiz feature. With the quiz feature, you can generate a random question for your users. This feature also massively helps in suppressing the spam bots from submitting forms. Contact Form 7 promotes the acceptance form-tag type to further strengthen the security factor to represent acceptance checkboxes. Acceptance checkboxes come in handy to confirm the submitter’s consent before submitting for a specific condition.

Contact Form 7 also incorporates other features such as Hidden field features, submit button, character counter, maximum and minimum length options, setting placeholder text, getting default values from the context, setting default values to the logged-in user, and getting default values from shortcode attributes.

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For a Contact Form 7 user, the following form extensions are recommended. They are a great addition to improving data collection; Flamingo is one of the addons that works wonders when integrated into Contact Form 7. With Flamingo, you can save submitted messages through the contact forms in the database. Bogo is another multilingual plugin that offers you language packs for Contact Form 7. Another one includes Contact Form 7 Database Addon - CFDB7, which prevents the loss of important data.

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Contact Form 7 consists of various integration types; MailChimp extension integrates MailChimp mailing lists to Contact Form 7. This enables the user to save his/her subscribers in a mailing list. Another integration type is the Void Contact Form 7 Widget, a page builder that offers easy to use drag and drop features. Bootstrap for Contact Form 7, a plugin for Contact Form 7, modifies the contact form's output and styles it in compliance with themes using the Bootstrap CSS framework.

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Contact Form 7 can certainly save partial submissions with the help of Flamingo.

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Contact Form 7 doesn’t have Save forms for later features; therefore, you might lose essential data if forms are left pending.

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Contact Form 7 incorporates Abandoned form features, including viewing the user's IP addresses, sending the user an email who abandoned the form, and viewing the list of entries in the Admin side for abandoned form submission.

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Contact Form 7 includes a Form analytics tab that displays form analytics such as acquiring default values from the context, setting up values to the logged-in user, and getting default values from shortcode attributes.

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Contact Form 7 encompasses the email autoresponders feature. You’ll have to select the <em>Use Mail </em>checkbox and then copy your email's shortcode to use this feature.

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