WordPress Plugin: Contact Coldform
![[ Image: Coldform Icon ]](https://perishablepress.com/wp/wp-content/images/2008/wp-coldform/coldform-icon.png "Contact Coldform"){kind=icon}
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!
Update!
Contact Coldform had a good run (10 years!), but it’s time for something far better: Contact Form X. CFX is superior to Contact Coldform in every way. Contact Form X gives you all the same features of Contact Coldform, plus you also get a recent-email dashboard widget, GDPR options, inline docs, Google reCaptcha, and of course the contact form itself is all Ajax-powered and super awesome.
Contact Coldform = 2008–2018.
Contact Form X = 2018 & beyond..
I encourage all users of Contact Coldform to upgrade Contact Coldform to Contact Form X. You can learn more and download the plugin at the WP Plugin Directory. And yes, I use Contact Form X for my own contact form here at Perishable Press. </update>
Overview
- Plug-&-play: display Coldform anywhere
- Sweet emails: Coldform sends descriptive, well-formatted messages
- Safe and secure: Coldform blocks spam and filters malicious content
- Ultra-clean code: lightweight, standards-compliant, semantic, valid
- Fully customizable: easy to configure and style via Coldform Settings
Features
- Slick, toggle settings panels make it easy to customize 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
- Bot trap: hidden input field further reduces automated spam
- Secure form processing protects against bad bots and malicious input
- User-friendly error messages help users complete all required fields
Customize Everything
- Includes option to enable users to receive carbon copies
- Coldform message includes IP, host, agent, and other user details
- Customize 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 delivers descriptive, well-formatted content
- Better performance: conditional loading of stylesheet only when needed
More Features
- Works perfectly without JavaScript.
- Option to load CSS only when 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 to configure your options and 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 Settings Page (panels toggled closed)
- Coldform Settings Page (panels toggled open w/ default settings)
- Screenshot of the contact form (using default WP theme)
- Screenshot of the “success” message (using default WP theme)
- Alternate “coldskin” styles for the Coldform (default settings)
- Well-formatted plan-text email messages
- Squeaky clean HTML markup
Download
As explained at the beginning of this post, I am retiring Contact Coldform. The plugin will be updated through 2018 or so, and will encourage all Coldform users to upgrade to the far superior Contact Form X. Check it out and download via the WordPress.org Plugin Directory:
160 responses to “WordPress Plugin: Contact Coldform”
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
Good point, Louis. What about providing an option in the admin area?
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.
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.
My pleasure Jon — glad to be of service :)
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,
Hi Juan, thanks for the feedback — great to see you using the Coldform!
Although I don’t recommend disabling the spam field, I do think that options to show or hide each of the input fields would be useful. As it is, removing the spam field would take a fair amount of code-wrangling, and I don’t recommend it.
Regards,
Jeff
Hello ! I just tried to upload, set up and post Coldforms but all I got is to print the tag … it’s very strange, I’m sure it must be some little thing I’m doing wrong …
I could set up the options wonderfully, but then, when I did a special post and entered the tag, I simply get it printed … :5
Does it need a specific loop ? I have a very standard loop, but it doesn’t seems to work.
I’ll look further to see what’s happening !
By the way : what a gorgeous design in this site ! Cheers !
Obviously I was using some rich text format in the visual editor : I’ve pasted the tag in the html editor and all works fine now. Well this is great ! Many thanks for this wonderful plugin.
@Ignacio: My pleasure! Glad to hear you got it working! Thanks for the feedback :)
Hi Jeff,
Just downloaded your plugin and love the clean syntax behind it!
However, there’s a conflict with the meta tag plugin, HeadSpace2.
With both Coldform and HeadSpace2 activated:
1) After submit, the success message that gets displayed is duplicated in the [title] tag (with HTML tags and all).
2) When I check the email from the form, three copies of that email are in my inbox.
When I deactivate HeadSpace2, these problems no longer occur.
Would this be a problem with your plugin or HeadSpace2?
I’m thinking it’s HeadSpace 2, but I thought I’d mention it here as well!
Thanks for reading,
-Ray
@Ray: Sorry for the delay — we are buying a house and things are extremely hectic around here. Anyhow, I think I recall another user experiencing the same issue with the Headspace plugin. I am not sure where the conflict is originating from, however I will certainly investigate it as soon as time allows. Do you happen to know if Headspace interferes with other contact forms as well? I imagine that the functionality of Headspace is more of a commodity than a contact form plugin, so perhaps you have found smoother sailing with an alternate? Regardless, thanks for mentioning this — it is on the radar and will be addressed as soon as possible.