WordPress Plugin: Contact Coldform
Published Tuesday, January 8, 2008 @ 11:27 am • 66 Responses
Welcome to the homepage for Contact Coldform, a free contact-form plugin for WordPress. Contact Coldform is designed with a sharp focus on clean code, solid performance, and ease of use. No frills, no gimmicks, only pure contact-form satisfaction. If you are looking for a solid, well-designed, user-friendly, fully customizable contact form, look no further: Coldform is perfect for any WordPress blogger. The comprehensive Options panel makes Coldform easy for beginners to take full control, while the consistent, logical PHP/(X)HTML code makes Coldform ideal for advanced users desiring customized functionality. The best of both worlds: a “clean-slate” contact form that provides everything you want and nothing you don’t! :)
Coldform Features:
- Compatible with WordPress versions 1.5 - 2.5 and beyond.
- Plug-n-play: add Coldform to any WordPress page or post.
- Simple installation — upload, activate, and customize.
- Complete WordPress Administrative Options panel for full control.
- Ultra-clean code output: standards-compliant, valid (X)HTML.
- Customizable anti-spam challenge question to protect against spam.
- Secure form processing and protection against malicious attacks.
- Same-page error messages to help users complete required fields.
- No obtrusive markup or code added to your
<head>. - Includes option to enable users to send carbon copies to themselves.
- Coldform message includes IP, host, agent, and much more.
- Customizable form-field captions, error messages, and success message.
- Customizable drop-in CSS skins for easy styling.
- Customizable CSS attributes.
- Customizable everything!
Coldform is perfect for WordPress users who want full control over the markup, presentation, and functionality of their contact form. Coldform presents delicious code on every front:
- Squeaky-clean PHP: every line like a fine wine.
- Crispy-clean markup: source code presents with proper alignment and spacing.
- Shiny-clean email formatting: Coldform-processed emails deliver complete information in a sharp, organized fashion.
Installation and Usage:
- Unzip the “contact-coldform” directory.
- Upload directory to your “plugins” folder and activate.
- Insert “<
!--coldform-->” (without quotes) to any page or post. - Customize your preferences in the Coldform Admin Options panel.
- Check out http://perishablepress.com/ for more info and updates.
- Enjoy Coldform!
Styling Coldform:
Contact Coldform features the following default CSS hooks:
- The entire form is enclosed within
<div id="coldform">for easy, targeted styling. - Each form section is enclosed within a
<fieldset>for usability and accessibility. - Each
<fieldset>contains a<legend class="hide">that may be hidden. - Each input field has a corresponding label:
<label class="label">. - Each input label has a corresponding input:
<input class="input" type="text">. - The form submit button includes its own
submitclass:<input class="submit">. - Coldform contains a
<div class="clear"> </div>to ensure proper layout. - Everything else is customizable via the Coldform Options panel.
- Check out a few Coldform Coldskins for plug-n-play CSS styling.
Coldform Screenshots:
![[ Thumbnail: Coldform (X)HTML Source Code ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/wp-coldform/coldform-source_.gif)
Coldform (X)HTML Source Code (via Firefox)
![[ Thumbnail: Coldform PHP Source Code ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/wp-coldform/coldform-script_.gif)
Coldform PHP Source Code (via Dreamweaver)
![[ Thumbnail: Coldform User Interface - Input Screen ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/wp-coldform/coldform-input_.gif)
Coldform User Interface (as styled at Perishable Press)
![[ Thumbnail: Coldform User Interface - Success Message ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/wp-coldform/coldform-output_.gif)
Coldform Success Message (as styled at Perishable Press)
![[ Thumbnail: Coldform Email Formatting ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/wp-coldform/coldform-email_.gif)
Coldform Email Formatting (via Thunderbird)
Coldform Demonstration:
Check out the Coldform as styled here at Perishable Press. 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. Note: please send links to your own, customized Coldforms so that I may include them as examples in this section. Thanks! :)
Live Examples:
Easy CSS Customization:
Looking for an easy way to style and customize your Coldform using CSS? Check out the growing archive of free Coldform Coldskins! Just grab a skin and place into your stylesheet for easy, plug-n-play CSS styling.
Coldform Download:
[ current version 0.88 • 8KB zip download • works with WordPress 1.5 - 2.5+ • 1464 downloads ]
Alternate Versions
- Download Arabic Version of Contact Coldform
[ version 0.88 • 249 downloads • more info ] - Download Spanish (Spain) Version of Contact Coldform
[ version 0.88 • 175 downloads • more info ]
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Dialogue
66 Responses Jump to comment form
January 8, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Okay, my feedback after 10 minutes playing with the plugin:
- index.php to prevent directory listing ? I think that should be .htaccess’ work. Maybe you’ve put this file for novice users, after all why not.
- localization is not doesn’t cover every area : the
<legend>elements and the submit button text can’t be translated. - a way to deactivate certain fields should be given in the admin configuration page (I’m thinking of a checkbox next to the “Name (required)” (for example) fields.
It’s a wonderful out-of-the-box plugin, with great information inside, and a clean presentation on the outside (the “footer” in the configuration page is very smart). Congratulations !
January 8, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Oh, my comment is all broken ! I used a HTML list (ul tag) and a legend tag between “the” and “elements”.
Also, it would be very nice to have more space in the comment textarea on your blog, because it’s hard to write in such a tiny place. More width please :)
(and a button to preview the comment ? Noo I’m asking too much :p)
January 9, 2008 at 3:54 am
Your rescued my comment well, he’s now as first intended.
Localization is a must have nowadays, but I think field exclusions is important too. I mean, a form with more than 3 fields often exhauste in advance the reader. He’s like “oh damn, too many fields, I’d better not write him.
Glad to heard we’ll have more space to write here soon ! About the preview idea, you seem to have chosen to go with something “live”, but my opinion on is that a classic static preview would be fine.
Or if you think live is better, I think a button would be nicer than a “letter by letter autoupdating live box”; a button that would create the preview dynamicaly on submit. It can be done really easily with Mootools (I prefer Mootools over the others libs, but they can do too).
What do you think ?
PS: damn, I want the 404 plugin !!
January 9, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Hi,
is there a way to use the Contact Coldform by puting the directly in the page template source instead of adding it to a post?
Thanks!
January 10, 2008 at 2:47 am
As I said elsewhere, this looks great! So clean - I wish my code looked like that!
Congratulations - I’ll be trying it out when I’ve got the time..
January 11, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Excellent job on the plugin.
May I suggest perhaps a simple improvement to address the field exclusion would be to provide css id for each of the respective fieldsets. Then the user could turn them off with just css.
January 12, 2008 at 3:15 am
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.
January 15, 2008 at 11:00 am
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?
February 6, 2008 at 5:00 am
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!
:-)
February 11, 2008 at 5:30 pm
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.
February 11, 2008 at 6:30 pm
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.
February 12, 2008 at 3:10 am
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.
February 12, 2008 at 12:57 pm
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.
March 4, 2008 at 7:01 am
Hello Jeff,
I found today a conflict between your plugin and absolute-comments plugin.
http://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/absolute-comments-manager-instant-reply/
Try to activate this plugin in your blog and try to use absolute-comments plugin and see what’s happened.
After deactivating your plugin it worked.
Can you check this issue ?
Thanking you in advance.
April 2, 2008 at 1:08 am
Is this plugin really not working with Wordpress 2.5 ??
April 2, 2008 at 5:22 am
Chris,
Mine is 2.5 and the plugin works like a charm.
May 11, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Love this plugin, very easy, works right out of the box.
THANK YOU!
Of course, I have a tiny little question, the name and email input fields are run together, i there a way to get them to line up like the rest of the form?
May 13, 2008 at 5:41 pm
That did it :)
I played around with the left margin & the width a bit. It looks VERY NICE now & it works too.
Thanks again.
June 6, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Great plug-in! I’m still tinkering with styling options but I;m loving it already! Thanks so much.
June 7, 2008 at 10:02 pm
This plugin looks great ! Wish I could use it. Sadly it doesn’t work for me. Everything seems to function properly…except it just doesn’t actually send the mail.
June 9, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Thanks Pershable
I’m trying to track down the problem, because I can put a simple mail function using a plain text editor in a static xhtml or html page and it works fine. So does other software that utilizes this function.
So, I am checking with my hosting service and thinking it’s something to do with my .htaccess and/or the fact that my Wordpress is on a sub.domain. Or perhaps it’s my Wordpress version itself (2.2..1)
I am determined to get this to work. It looks like too good and necessary of plugin for me to pass up.
I will find the solution then come back and let you know when I track down the problem, in case anyone else needs the info in the future..
June 10, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Thanks.
June 12, 2008 at 12:03 am
Update
Ok, sometimes it’s the simple things that drive you crazy. I checked and double checked everything scoured through my php.ini…read almost every post at the large support forums of my webhost. Checked my error logs and never saw a thing relating to coldform. Saw some other errors but nothing to do with coldform
Turns out I had to de-activate my ‘Automatic Upgrade’ plugin. Wierd I know, but that seemed to release the coldform from whatever limbo it was in and it began working !
I had installed and activated the automatic upgrade plugin to try it out…it didn’t work…and I forgot to deactivate it.
Then later on when I installed coldform it (auto upgrade)) interfered with coldform somehow.
Then I decided to check my error logs immediately after attempting to use coldform and an error popped up about the auto upgrade plugin…that’s when I hit pay dirt.
Wish I’d have thought of that sooner…whew
Great plugin !
Thanks,
Stan
June 15, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I don’t know what’s up with the auto update plugin except it didn’t work. When I forgot to de-activate it, my blog still ran fine. So fine, that’s one reason I have not been in a hurry to upgrade. I’m still at WPv 2.2.1
But I’m thinking that when I’m ready I’ll probably do the upgrade manually. I will feel better having complete control and know every thing that has taken place…got to be better than not knowing what actually went on.
As far as any changes to the coldform files it doesn’t seem like their were. I wasn’t paying very close attention to detail when I glanced through the coldform files before installing. I could have missed something.
I would bet that nothing did change in the files since coldform is working flawlessly. (now that the auto update plugin released it from a headlock)
Thanks Jeff.
Regards,
Stan
August 20, 2008 at 8:34 am
I am curious if your plugin can generate an automated response email thanking users for filling out the form?
Thanks.
August 20, 2008 at 10:56 am
I’m not sure if this is a great idea. Does anyone actually like receiving such mails?
I know I don’t.
August 20, 2008 at 11:37 am
I think providing an option would be wise. I agree not everyone always enjoys getting and then deleting these kinds of emails. However, I have worked with clients before where this is a feature they have demanded. Thanks for your feedback.
August 20, 2008 at 11:40 am
My vision of things is: we should not encourage such bad practices, even if it makes us miss (stupid?) clients and therefore, money.
Of course, I understand that not everyone will go by my side :D
August 21, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Wanted to say thanks for a great wordpress contact form plugin! I’ve been using a number of contact forms on my blog, moongrabber, and they’ve all had problems until now.
September 11, 2008 at 7:42 am
Hello! I’m trying your plugin in my site ebanking.cl
Gor the moment it’s working fine, although it would be nice to have an option to disable some fields, in ym case, I would prefer to disable the spam field.
My best regards,
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1 • Louis
January 8, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I’m astonished, wow !
That plugin was my very dream not so long ago, and wow, now it’s real !
Your introduction with the bullets list was very appetizing, but the screenshots of the markup, OMG !
I’ve not seen a code so clean since the Mootools core maybe… it really recalls the WordPress slogan “Code is Poetry”.
But all this joy was broken by some unintended fact : the download link is broken :(
It leads to :
http://perishablepress.com/mint/pepper/orderedlist/downloads/download.php..?file=http%3A//perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/online/plugins/Contact-CoI hope you find a fix quick as i sure ain’t the only one waiting to try it !