WordPress Plugin: Contact Coldform : Perishable Press

Welcome to the homepage for Contact Coldform, a secure, lightweight, flexible contact form with plenty of options and squeaky clean markup. Coldform blocks spam while making it easy for your visitors to contact you from your WordPress-powered website. The comprehensive Settings Page makes it easy to take full control with plenty of options and several built-in themes for styling the form. Coldform delivers everything you need and nothing you don’t — no frills, no gimmicks, just pure contact-form satisfaction. Now available at the WP Plugin Directory!

Overview

Plug-n-play: use shortcode or template tag to display Coldform anywhere
Sweet emails: Coldform sends descriptive, well-formatted messages in plain-text
Safe and secure: Coldform blocks spam and filters malicious content
Ultra-clean code: lightweight, standards-compliant, semantic, valid HTML markup
Fully customizable: easy to configure and style from the Coldform Settings page

Features

Slick, toggling-panel Settings Page makes it easy to customize and style Coldform
Style Coldform using built-in “coldskins” or upload some custom CSS
Provides template tag to display Coldform anywhere in your theme
Provides shortcode to display Coldform on any post or page
Displays customizable confirmation message to the sender

Anti-spam & Security

Captcha: Coldform includes challenge question/answer (w/ option to disable for users)
Bot trap: hidden input field further reduces automated spam
Firewall: secure form processing protects against bad bots and malicious input
User-friendly: same-page error messages to help users complete required fields

Customize Everything

Includes option to enable users to receive carbon copies
Coldform message includes IP, host, agent, and other user details
Customizable form-field captions, error messages, and success message
Includes three built-in themes “coldskins” to style, or
Style the Coldform with your own custom CSS
Option to add a custom prefix to the subject line
Option to disable the captcha for registered users

Clean Codes

Coldform brings delicious code on every front:

Squeaky-clean PHP: every line like a fine wine
Crispy-clean markup: valid, semantic source code with proper formatting
Shiny-clean emails: Coldform emails deliver descriptive, well-formatted content
Better performance: conditional loading of styles only when Coldform is displayed

More Features

Works perfectly without JavaScript.
Option to load CSS and custom styles only when/where Coldform is displayed
Option to reset default settings
Options to customize many aspects of the form
Options to customize success, error, and spam messages
Option to enable and disable CSS styles

Installation and Usage:

Typical plugin install: upload, activate, and customize in the WP Admin.

Unzip and upload the entire directory to your “plugins” folder and activate
Use the shortcode to display Coldform on any post or page, or:
Use the template tag to display the Coldform anywhere in your theme.
Visit the Coldform Settings Page to configure your options and for more info.

Shortcode: [coldform]

Template tag:

<?php if (function_exists('contact_coldform_public')) contact_coldform_public(); ?>

For more information, visit the Coldform Settings page and readme.txt file.

Coldform Screenshots

Coldform Demos & Examples

Check out the Coldform Demo. Feel free to send a test message to check out the formatting of the success message. Also check out the error functionality by omitting any required field. Also, listed below are examples of Coldform “in the wild”.

Live Examples:

If you use the Coldform on your site, share a link and I’ll add it here. Thanks! :)

Coldform Download

Download Coldform from the WP Plugin Directory:

Download Contact Coldform

Alternate/Previous Versions

160 Responses

Louis – January 12, 2008

I disagree with weston. Why generate a content if it’s not of any use ?

If everything worked like that, imagine what search engines crawlers would see, or worse, imagine what pages would look like without CSS applied.
Perishable – January 14, 2008

@Stephen: Thank you kindly! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the functionality of plugin as well! ;)

@weston: Thanks for the idea.. I think adding unique field ids is a great idea. If anything it will give users a way to style each field individually.

@Louis: Good point about not using the ids primarily for hiding/showing unwanted fields, however, I do think ids are a good idea for reasons previously mentioned.
Gail – January 15, 2008

Hi,
I really like the plugin, but my mail server requires smtp authentication, how/where (in the code) can I enter my smtp username and password so the plugin will actually send the email to the recipient?
Perishable – January 15, 2008

Hi Gail,

This initial release of Coldform does not support SMTP authentication, however, I am looking into adding that feature (along with a growing list of others) to the next upgrade.
6ft5 – February 6, 2008

Hey, found your form today and implemented it on my site.

It’s excellent! Thanks for helping me postpone learning to code a while longer!
:-)
Perishable – February 6, 2008

My pleasure, 6ft5 — happy to help postpone the learning process ;)
Thanks for the feedback!
Rasheed – February 11, 2008

That’s Plugin looks cool.

I am trying to use it my non English blog without success.

When i try to send a message without completing the required information the non English characters become gibberish as described in these links:

http://www.rasheed-b.com/tmp/cold.gif
http://www.rasheed-b.com/tmp/cold2.gif

I tried to find a solution but at last i gave up. May i find here helpful information.

Thanks.
Rasheed – February 11, 2008

Hello Perishable,

Thanks for your quick respond.

I still investigating it more and I don’t thinks it’s a translation issue. I am familiar with translating plugins and this case looks like something different.

I tried to check this similar plugin:
http://www.deliciousdays.com/contact

And here is the result:
http://www.rasheed-b.com/tmp/diff.gif

Arabic characters looks normal.
Perishable – February 11, 2008

Rasheed,

I believe this is a language/translation-related issue, although I am far from knowledgeable in this area. Using methods described here, it is possible to add support for different languages. When writing the plugin, I did incorporate (nearly all) of the hooks needed for successful translation, but simply did not have time to actually translate any of the content. Although I am not 100% certain that this would resolve the issue, it certainly would help to find out. As you appear fluent in both English and Arabic, perhaps you would be willing to investigate further..?

( Also, thanks for the screenshots — I am going to combine them into your first post. )

Regards,
Jeff
Mustafa Saadi – February 12, 2008

Hello Jeff, rasheed,

The problem is that all _$POST variables are converted to HTML entities using the htmlentities php function. I don’t think you need that anyway — emails shound be sent in plain format. Anyway, we have uploaded the fix archive to rasheed’s server. Here is the link: http://www.rasheed-b.com/tmp/contact-coldform-fixed.zip

Regards,
Mustafa Saadi.
Perishable – February 12, 2008

Hi Mustafa Saadi,

Thank you for swooping in and saving the day, Mustafa! It should have occurred to me that htmlentities may have been the culprit. Are you sure that removing it does not jeopardize security of the form? I have read almost everywhere about “how important htmlentities is” to prevent JavaScript exploits, XSS attacks, etc.

Thanks for your help!
Jeff
Mustafa Saadi – February 12, 2008

Jeff,

I completely agree with you. You can really use the following: htmlentities( $html, ENT_QUOTES, “UTF-8″ ); or maybe htmlentities ($s, ENT_NOQUOTES, “UTF-8″); — remember that you should use the “header(‘Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8′);” when posting the data. Best to probably use strip_tags() and mysql_escape_string(), the strip_tags() function simply looks for any markup elements in a given string and removes them.

Regards,
Mustafa Saadi.