May
6th

WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection Version 2.0.0 Released!

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With over 140 comments, the WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection has been, by far, the most popular plugin that I’ve helped develop. It’s been downloaded tens of thousands of times and the post is my most popular of my website. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the plugin and finally decided to act on it, integrating all the recommendations that my readers have had!

Here are some of the features:

  1. The ability to create a subject dropdown list.
  2. The ability to make the challenge answer case sensitive or not.
  3. Additional improvements to prevent script tags from being evaluated in the fields passed.
  4. The ability to set a default subject line or allow the user to concatenate their own.
  5. Nicer styling with highlighted fields.

If you upgrade to this version (2.0.0), please note that you’ll have to modify the code on your Contact Page that instantiates the code. It used to be a comment and now it’s a typical substitution string.

Screenshot

WordPress Contact Form with Spam Protection

Go to the Project Page for additional details and a download link!

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32 Comments »

Comment by Wes Bos
2007-05-06 20:29:44
Great work, Ill definately be using this on my new site that I’m developing right now.
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-06 21:15:18
Thanks Wes! It took me a few months to catch up on the work I needed to do with this plugin. I hope to make it multi-lingual and add additional style customization in the future… just wanted to get this one out now, though!
 
 
Comment by XTraze
2007-05-06 23:41:11
I was using iFrames and some other HTML forms before this. And now I think I am going to try this form system now.
 
Comment by Nicholas
2007-05-07 08:12:32
Hi Douglas, I haven’t used this plugin yet, but may implement it in my blogs in the near future.

I actually didn’t even know you were developing these type of things, maybe I should stop by more often.

But, again, I just wanted to drop by and say hi. It seems like a month or so since I haven’t said hi.

Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-07 08:20:04
Hi Nicholas!

Welcome back and I’d love you to check in more often. :)

You can check out all the development projects on my Project Page. I’ve also got a couple more websites under development that should make a nice splash!

More to come!
Doug

 
 
Comment by Noah
2007-05-07 08:48:23
Fantastic improvements! I’ll likely upgrade all my existing WP contact forms with this one. The custom subject lines are a great addition.

I’ll also add it to the plugin list at wpZipper.

You might consider giving it a new name, so people can better differentiate it from the previous Contact Form plugin(s).

Karr Contact? (I resisted the use of a double “K”)

Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-07 09:59:29
Thanks, Noah!

I think changing the name at this point might be a bad idea - it’s been downloaded tens of thousands of times and is, by far, my most active page. Also … the naming, “Wordpress Contact Form with Spam Protection”, has significant SEO value. :)

Doug

Comment by Noah
2007-05-07 20:19:39
Ah, I wasn’t even considering the history your plugin has. Yes, changing the name sounds like a bad idea on second thought.
 
 
 
Comment by Dean Taplin
2007-05-07 13:15:45
Great work Doug. I had a bit of trouble getting this to work at first, but I found deleting my old contact page and creating a new one did the trick.
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-07 15:57:53
Thanks Dean. I had some trouble with WP-Cache continuously caching it regardless. I wound up turning it off until got the page where I needed it and then turned caching back on.
 
 
Comment by John Koetsier
2007-05-07 13:55:25
Douglas, that rocks. Thanks so much for making such a great plugin that I’ve already found useful on a site I did for a non-profit and I think I’ll find useful again on a site I’m doing for my artist brother-in-law.
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-07 15:56:49
You bet, John! Thanks for the kind comments. If you can think of some additional features, don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Doug

 
 
Comment by Brandon Wood
2007-05-08 15:10:40
Great work again Doug! The contact form looks very slick, I plan on adding it to my site as soon as I get a few extra minutes…
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-10 19:43:22
Brandon,

You always take the time to write something nice! I really appreciate it!

Doug

Comment by Brandon Wood
2007-05-10 20:02:07
No problem Doug - you consistently do a great job on this blog, so you make it easy to have something nice to say :)
 
 
 
Comment by Shawn
2007-05-15 08:55:42
OKay, I’m using this on my site, and it’s rad. Just what I needed, plus better. Thank you for making the perfect WordPress contact form!!
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-15 09:12:40
You bet, Shawn! More customization to come! The ability to add additional questions and customize the layout and styles!
Comment by Shawn
2007-05-17 11:01:53
One thing I would like to know: how do you make your comments work like this? I would love to be able to have the option to reply to comments, etc. It looks great.
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-17 11:16:59
Shawn, that’s the million dollar answer! I actually wrote the good folks at Akismet and asked them if they’d like to work with me to create this for comments and they didn’t sound enthusiastic about it.

However, WordPress 2.2 has some new comment hook capability so it may be possible for a plugin to be created. I’ll do some digging and see!

(Comments wont nest below this level)
 
 
 
 
Comment by Joni Mueller
2007-05-18 04:06:22
Douglas, how did you know my birthday is coming up?!?

This is wonderful! The Best Plugin Ever! And just when I thought it couldn’t get better! :-)

Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-05-18 06:13:34
Happy Birthday, Joni! Glad to hear it. More to come! Be sure to check out my other projects!
 
 
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-06-04 21:50:47
I added a new release tonight with an optional checkbox to copy yourself on the submission.
 
Comment by Dean @ Sachi
2007-06-07 13:49:27
Hey Doug- It’s certainly been awhile. I ran into this plugin while doing a search. Great job on it.

Question: how do you add a drop down list as you said? are we supposed to go into our contact page and just add ‘( Option A | Option B | etc… ) ? Doesn’t seem to work right for me. Obviously, I’m missing something.

Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-06-07 14:05:44
That’s a feature of the latest releases, Dean. If you have the latest releast - yes, you can simply add your subjects and deliminate them using a Pipe.
 
 
Comment by Nick Normal
2007-07-03 14:48:46
Hi Douglas,

is it possible to ’strip down’ this plugin so that it reads simply as:
‘YOUR EMAIL: [text input box] [submit button]‘?????
very simple. and the user puts their email into that box, and it gets sent to one of our emails, for the user to join a mailing list (which we input manually).

is this too far out of the way to use a WP plugin for a simple function?

also, after someone hits the ’submit’ button to what page are they taken? or does it verify the submit?

cheers for your help!
Nick

Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-07-03 20:34:32
Nick,

I think you took a left turn somewhere… this isn’t an email subscription plugin, it’s a contact page plugin. I you’d like an email subscription tool, I’d recommend Feedburner.

Doug

 
 
Comment by MT Herald Dot Com
2007-07-24 01:36:46
Thanx for that great plugin. Is an ultimate one. You could see it in action at my site too. Reduced a lot of spam burden.
 
Trackback by Shay's Blog
2007-08-21 14:42:54
Fighting Spam That Is Originating From The Contact Form…

A couple of a days ago, I started to get an influx of spam that was coming from the contact form from here.  Thanks to Douglas Karr who modified the original version of the wordpress plugin.  He added a challenge question which should cut down on th…

 
Comment by Becky
2007-09-04 09:50:31
Hi, I’ve been looking for a comment form for a customer’s wordpress-based site. They would like to have two forms for two different groups using the site.

Is this possible with your plugin?

 
Comment by Douglas Karr
2007-09-08 08:04:27
Updated to 2.0.7 today. This version uses wp_mail - a great change thanks to Callum Macdonald. For all of you folks who have been having troubles with mail working with your host - this should do the trick!
 
Comment by Michaël
2007-10-07 13:38:54
Great plugin,

I would like to use two forms in one website, is this possible?

grtz Michaël

 
2007-10-09 12:59:31
[...] Permalinks -uses _ instead of - in permalinks. Ultimate Tag Warrior -organizes tags for each post. Contact Form -a simple contact [...]
 
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