When I uploaded my first post last night I had a quick look around PC Scribbles and the template I’m currently using - just to see what needs to be added.  Certainly a lot, at the moment, but it’s growing and in time it’ll be sorted (as much as it can…).

One thing I’ve thought in the past was strange is that WordPress doesn’t have a “contact us” page - this is just a simple form that allows surfers to contact me rather than having a link that opens up outlook express.  The form automatically gets converted to an email which gets mailed to you.  Not a hard job and they’ve been around for years / decades.  I can only assume that it’s due to security - years ago there was a perl script called “mailform” which had a flaw that allowed 3rd parties to send spam out using your server.  It wasn’t long before the loophole was closed but I’d imagine there’s still servers online with the dodgy version of the script sending out thousands of emails 24 hours a day without the owner knowing.

Anyway, the plugin I chose is called Contact Form 7 and it has some nice features.  The main one is that it requires a captcha which is an image with some numbers on it.  To successfully send the message, the user needs to enter the numbers - it stops automated messages being sent from your server (in theory!)  There are some programs that can read the images and fill in the numbers so you need to keep an eye out for excessive bounced back messages which could indicate spams being sent.

Anyway, installation wasn’t too bad.  The usual - upload the plugin to the wp-content/plugins folder on the server.  Make sure that the captcha/tmp folder is write enabled otherwise the captcha won’t display (caught me out…).

Enable the plugin and go to settings / Contact Form 7 and there’s a default form there for you which works but didn’t have the captcha code in it.  Below is my version of the code…you need to click on default form in the Contact 7 settings and paste the code in the top box (removing the old code, of course). 

Your Name (required)
[text* your-name]
Your Email (required)
[email* your-email]
Subject
[text your-subject]
Your Message
[textarea your-message]
[captchac captcha-76 size:m]
Enter the code above: [captchar captcha-76]
[submit "Send"]

You will have to change the captcha-76 number to the code of your captcha.  To find it out there’s a button called Generate Tag.  Click on that, find where it says Captcha and a box will appear and it’ll have a name - in my case it’s captcha-76

Lastly, you need to create your contact us page which is really easy.  Go to manage, choose page and I called it Contact Us.  Swap to HTML view (if you use Visual Wordpress changes the code…not good) and copy in the following…

<edit>I tried to post the code needed here but it brought up the form…so you need to go to the Contact 7 settings, choose your form and at the top there’s some code saying “Copy and paste this code into your post content.”  Take the code below that and post away…simple!  Remember to post it via HTML view…</edit>

Remember to change the name if necessary (the code above was for the default form that came with the script).  Save the page and that’s it.  Check the page on your wordpress form, send yourself a mail and hopefully the contact us page is there for you - congrats!

Any problems…post in the comments…don’t send me an email via contact us

Martin

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