Create Robust Contact Forms Using The CForms WordPress Plugin

We always seem to want information from people who visit our sites. Online forms are a basic component for collecting this information. Contact forms, registration forms, or help requests all require a site visitor to input their information. After having a client complain about an existing WordPress form plugin on his site, I went looking for alternatives. What I found was the CForms WordPress plugin.

CForms provided a few features that made it a perfect fit for my client and due to the plugin’s flexibility, it’s able to fit every one of my clients. It’s very powerful, very capable, and gives me the ability to fit multiple needs. Did I mention it’s free?

With great power, comes great complexity. This is not what I would label a “beginner” level plugin. There are other plugins for forms that are easier and more intuitive to use. So, I label the CForms plugin as “developer friendly”, but not “user friendly”. However, if you are willing to spend a bit of effort on the learning curve, it’s well worth the time.

Here’s a rundown of the features that got my attention:

• Required Field Notification – the biggest problem with the original form plugin was the form submittal process. Users were skipping a required field or two and when they tried to submit the form, their information went to the server, identified that they had missed a required field and then came back with the required field error message….and a blank form. This means the user had to retype all of their data again. Most users were filling out the form again and then sending a complaint, but inevitably, some users probably just left the site and never bothered retyping. Cforms gives immediate feedback on a required field before sending info to the server, this means no retyping for users.
• Form Cloning – Recreating new forms can eat up a lot of time. Now, all I have to do is copy an existing form and tweak it. This feature alone is worth its weight in gold.
• Mail Server Settings – The ability to enable an external SMTP server for email notifications solved an issue that I had with my client’s DNS.
• Database Storage – Saving submitted form information seems like a logical thing to do since we are already using WordPress, but there are some plugins who don’t do this. CForms does and it’s good to have a backup of user submitted information, in case an email gets lost.
• Data Exports – Form data stored in the database can be exported in multiple formats. This is a must-do thing.
• CSS Styling – The form’s look and feel is completely customizable using custom style sheets. This is important when coding for a client who has paid for a custom design to the website and doesn’t want a generic form that doesn’t match.

These are just a few of the features that I was needing at the time. The Cforms plugin has a lot more functionality than I need or want today, but it’s a wonderful thing that the additional features are there when I need them. Those extra features come into play when my client says something along the lines of, “you know what would be really cool…”.  I highly recommend this plugin and throwing a few donation dollars to the plugin author wouldn’t be a bad thing either.

Christopher “Toff” Ward
OpenSourceMarketer.com

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