How to Add a Contact Form to a Wordpress Blog

A contact form is an important element for any website; it gives your audience the opportunity to directly contact you through email without the hassles of hunting down your email address. A contact form can be easily installed on a Wordpress blog in a matter of minutes using the right tools. This article will share why you need a contact form, which Wordpress forms are worthwhile and how to implement each onto your blog.

Reasons to Use a Contact Page

As noted, contact forms are important to blogs because it lets interested parties easily reach out to you with very little hassle. Here are a few reasons why you should have a contact form page:

• Receive vital feedback from your blog readers
• Let potential advertisers have access to you
• Gain valuable connections with fellow blog owners

The list goes on and on but you can only gain these benefits if you implement a contact page. Not everyone will reach you through email but it’s something you can’t avoid if you plan to operate a successful blog.

Top Content Form Wordpress Plugins

Wordpress is a tremendously powerful platform that is backed by thousands of developers. Wordpress developers have created every type of plugin under the sun including a wealth of fabulous contact forms that can be quickly implemented in just a few minutes of configuration.

Here are the top contact form plugins for Wordpress:

• Contact Form 7 – The most highly used contact form on the Wordpress ‘market’, Contact Form 7 is extremely simple and offers a lot of features that lets you rapidly implement a form using the combination of a blog page and shortcode.

• CFormsII – CFormsII is an extremely flexible Wordpress contact form plugin that gives you the options of full CSS styling, multiple form usage, widget support, spam protection and more under the helpful guidance of a drag-and-drop interface.

• Tiny Contact Form – Tiny Contact Form is a minimal contact form that covers the bare essentials for people to contact you. There isn’t much to Tiny Contact Form but it’s easy to implement and will give your readers complete access to send you an email.

There are many additional Wordpress contact form plugins freely available in the plugin directory. You can access plugins through the Wordpress dashboard by browsing the ‘plugin’ drop down or by installing it directly onto your server using the included documentation for each plugin.

How to Implement a Wordpress Contact Form

Now that you know what a contact form is and why you should be using one it’s time to install a form plugin onto your Wordpress blog. This process of installation and implementation is extremely easy and can be done in the matter of minutes. Here are the five major steps:

• Step 1: Locate the Wordpress Contact Form plugin the through the plugin search (within your dashboard) or by browsing the official Wordpress.org plugin directory.

• Step 2: Install the contact form plugin by clicking the ‘install’ button within the dashboard or by uploading it to your ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory via FTP.

• Step 3: Create a new page named something akin to ‘Contact Me’ and link it to your main navigation. Keep it as a draft at this time until you’re done adding the contact form shortcodes.

• Step 4: Add the form shortcodes (varies by plugin) to the contact page through the HTML editor. Add additional information that applies to how you want visitors to contact you.

• Step 5: Publish your contact page. Viola!

Congratulations, you now have a contact form on your Wordpress blog. People will now have greater access to contact you for questions, comments, joint ventures, advertising inquiries, guest posting opportunities and much more.

Conclusion

In this article, you've learned why, what and how to get started with contact forms for your Wordpress blog. You will notice, in time, that the contact form will become one of the best channels for your readers to reach you directly. Use each conversation to display your helpfulness, authority and build a great relationship.