Are you tired of all the “bells and whistles” of most WordPress contact forms? Are you exhausted from modifying CSS for hours just to get a contact plugin to display with your theme?
Try out the Simpler Contact Form for WordPress. This solution was based off my original Download (1407)
How does this work?
Instead of downloading and testing multiple plugins and getting them to work with your theme, you simply replace your “comments.php” file with the one provided in the download. It allows people to comment on a page called “Contact,” but instead of displaying the comments, they are hidden. Only an administrator can view the comments from your WordPress dashboard.
The “comments.php” file included is a basic comments file. It just has a few lines of code changed that check to see if the page’s name is “Contact.”
Using the file on different or multiple pages
To use the contact form on a page with a different name, open “comments.php” and edit this line:
if (is_page('Contact')) {You would change Contact to the name, slug, or ID of your page.
To use the contact form on multiple pages, change the above code to something like this example:
if (is_page('Contact') || is_page('About')) {All this does is tells the comments file to not display comments on the pages that you name.
Foreseeable problems
I’ve been perfectly happy using this solution for months now. However, some bloggers might have 100s of comments every day. This solution might not be ideal for them because the comments are displayed like regular comments in your WordPress administration panel. So, you might have to sift through a lot of comments to see who has contacted you, unless the WordPress team puts together a better comment management system.
Also, if you ever change themes or your “comments.php” file, then your comments on your “Contact” page will no longer be private. There are only two solutions to this. You can delete each comment after you’ve read and replied to it by email or use this solution forever, even with theme changes.
Final thoughts
I’ve never seen this as a permanent solution to my contact form needs, but it’s worked thus far. I’m happy with it because I never get spam since all comments are filtered through Akismet. There’s no need for irritating CAPTCHAs. I don’t have to edit any CSS or XHTML to get the form to display correctly. It appears just like my normal comment form. Plus, all my contact form comments are viewable from my WordPress dashboard.
This definitely isn’t the solution for everyone, but it might be worth trying out. I thought I’d share it with you.
I will try. Actually, I was searching for something like this, that shows the comments in the admin panel. But I never thought that it could be done my modifying the commments.php file! Thanks a lot.
Thank U!
Byez
EarnBlogger
It’s definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re one of those people that reads every comment like me. Even though I get a lot of comments here, I still read them all, so it’s a good solution for me.
Steve
No problem. I hope this works out for you well.
Thanks, exactly what I was looking for, although i still need to style the form, better then working with those out of box contact form plugins with a million invalid CSS elements
Hi Justin,
I’ve installed it and like the simple functionality, but is there a way to make it do something other than show the same page after the comment has been submitted?
I’m guessing not, so will probably do something like put a link back to the home page on the contact page, but it’s a bit inelegant.
Thanks for the idea though (and for the theme!)
Hello!
I think this try.
What a simple, elegant solution to the problem of over-designed comment forms. Well done! This has the added bonus of decreasing the amount of blog related email as well, by confining incoming communication to the WP admin interface. That’s a huge plus for me.
I’m a little confused about implementation though. In Wordpress 2.7 there isn’t a comments.php file to replace. I’m seeing wp-comments-post.php. Are you saying I should rename your doc to this? Or is does wp-comments-post.php need to be amended in some way with code from your comments.php?
Ah. Should have read more closely before commenting. It’s the comments.php in your theme that needs changing. Got it. Thanks!
ive been looking for something like this for a long time. finally. thank you soo much.
but it seems not working in latest WP. i mean, 2.7.1. Or i did something wrong?
Ya know, I was just pondering this idea over lunch. Just came back and queried Google to find that, yup, someone else has thought of it too. Although, you beat me by a year
I just had the same idea tonight about using the comment field as a contact form but started google-ing and found this page since I was trying to find a solution to a “problem” I have. The thing is that I would like to use the comment form as contact form but display a message when the message has been sent to give the user some kind of a confirmation that his message has been sent. Any ideas ?
I found a solution to my problem..
An Ajax plugin that displays a message after a comment has been sent.
http://webdeveloperplus.com/wordpress/new-wordpress-plugin-wdp-ajax-comments/
Moderated comments work just as well; plus it makes it easy to post them publicly. But you did give me an idea that I hadn’t though of. Its really so simple.
Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! Simplicity prevails once again!!
This is a great solution, the only little snag was the confirmation message, but that was solved with a bit of tinkering, thanks for a great solution
This looks like a very useful post. I’ve got a free Wordpress account- I can’t afford a paid one right now- and I’ve been trying to add a contact form to my blog.
It seems plugins are only available for paid accounts and the free Contact forms I’ve tried out whose code can be copied and pasted either don’t work because the code isn’t html or some fields don’t show. For the time being I have one with http://www.123contactform.com which redirects my visitors to an external page.
I’d like for the form to be integrated to make the site look more professional.
This change you’re proposing would be ideal but I don’t know how to find the php code from my dashboard. What steps should I follow? Does this work for free accounts? I’m asking you this because if one isn’t paying Wordpress, the CSS code- for instance- can’t be altered.