NOTE WordPress 5.0 & Gutenberg editor update – this plugin is now compatible with WP 5.0, however, the Gutenberg editor does not recognise shortcodes with hyphons (dash) characters, so a new shortcode is introduced from v2.5, [cf7form ...]. Your form table will now display this new shortcode. Creating new pages/posts with Gutenberg from now on will require you use this....
NOTE WordPress 5.0 & Gutenberg editor update – this plugin is now compatible with WP 5.0, however, the Gutenberg editor does not recognise shortcodes with hyphons (dash) characters, so a new shortcode is introduced from v2.5, [cf7form ...]. Your form table will now display this new shortcode. Creating new pages/posts with Gutenberg from now on will require you use this new shortcode. The old remains active for existing content.
The plugin uses the smart-grid css plugin to build beautiful form layouts. It introduces a graphical editor to design your forms, as well as a coloured html syntax editor built using the excellent CodeMirror editor. It is now possible to design smart layouts with ease.
In addition the plugin also introduces multiple smart input functionalities, such as,
- tabled input sections: these allows you to group several input fields as table rows, the plugin will automatically add an ‘Add Row’ button to your front end form, giving your users the ability to add multiple rows of your grouped fields.
- tabbed sections: with this plugin you can build tabbed sections of fields, allowing your users to add additional tabs. It is a similar concept to the tabled input section above, but in a tabbed layout insead.
- collapsible sections: for long and complex forms you can now group your front-end fields into collapsible sections, making it easier for user to see the big picture.
- toggled collapsible sections for optional sections. A toggle with a default Yes/No value is inserted, allowing your users to submit optional fields which within the section can be set to required in your design (See FAQ section for more info).
- reusable sub-forms: if you have fields which repeat across multiple forms, you can now build a sub-form which you can include in your form, saving you the trouble of redesigning the form each time, but also making large forms much easier to maintain.
- form categories: the plugin introduces form taxonomy to classify your forms for the use of online registration where users may need to be associated with a given set of forms to access.
- dynamic dropdown fields: these are special select fields which you can populate with either existing post titles, or managed lists such as units, or even using a custom filter. This makes dynamic interlinking of existing CMS data in your dashboard a piece of cake, giving you a very powerful tool for data capture.
- plays nice with Post My CF7 Form plugin: and best of all you can map all your forms to custom posts using the now stable Post My CF7 Form plugin.
- redesign the form editor: this plugin now uses the WordPress default post editor page to edit/build forms, therefore making it easier for developer to plugin their functionality on top, while preserving all the hooks of Contact Form 7.
Looking for Collaborators
Are you a WordPress developer or an HTML/Javascript master? Want to collaborate on this plugin? There are some really great pieces of functionality that are in the roadmap for this plugin, but I just don’t have the time or resources to get them all on file in a timely manner. So join me on GitHub if you want to collaborate.
Checkout our other CF7 plugin extensions
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CF7 Polylang Module – this plugin allows you to create forms in different languages for a multi-language website. The plugin requires the Polylang plugin to be installed in order to manage translations.
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CF7 Multi-slide Module – this plugin allows you to build a multi-step form using a slider. Each slide has cf7 form which are linked together and submitted as a single form.
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Post My CF7 Form – this plugin allows you to save you cf7 form to a custom post, map your fields to meta fields or taxonomy. It also allows you to pre-fill fields before your form is displayed.
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CF7 Google Map – allows google maps to be inserted into a Contact Form 7. Unlike other plugins, this one allows map settings to be done at the form level, enabling diverse maps to be configured for each forms.
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Smart Grid-Layout Design for CF7 – allows responsive grid layout Contact Form 7 form designs, enabling modular designs of complex forms, and rich inter-linking of your CMS data with taxonomy/posts populated dynamic dropdown fields.
Documentation
This plugin has a substantial set of FAQs and screenshots that is has a lot of information. Please go through the FAQs and screenshot captions to understand how to use the basic functionality.
The plugin has a number of hooks (filters and actions) which can be leveraged to further customise your form layouts and fields. Please refer to the Helper Metabox available in the form post editor when you create/edit a form. The helpers have commented code snippets which you can copy to and paste in your functions.php file to further understand how to use them.
Get in touch in the support forum if you some clarification.
A video will be made available in the near future to further demonstrate how to use this plugin, so what this space!
Support Open-source effort
This plugin would not have been possible without the following open-source efforts. Please consider visiting these plugins pages and making a donation to its authors to say thank you. Even small amount of beer money is always appreciated. Alternatively/additionally you can help in the maintenance or translation effort.
- Beautify – a JQuery plugin to beautify html text, used in the text editor of this plugin.
- CodeMirror – a remarkable JQuery text editor that allows for colour-coded highlighting among many other functionality. Used to edit form source code in text editor of this plugin.
- CSS Smart Grid – a CSS plugin that allows for intuitive css styling of responsive grid layouts. Used for building the responsive form layouts.
- JQuery Clipboard – copy text to the clipboard, used for helper links.
- JQuery Nice Select – makes beautiful dropdown fields.
- JQuery Select2 – this plugin converts dropdowns into powerful searchable dropdown fields.
- JQuery Toggles – enables pretty toggle switches on collapsible sections.
- PHP Query – a php class that enables traversing and manipulation of html documents using css selectors like JQuery. This is used to build the modular functionality of form designs.
Thanks to
Birmania @birmania for providing:
- a fix for js toggles.
- a fix for file fields in tabs as mail attachments
Andrew Browning @altworks for poviding:
- an IE polyfill for frontend table fields.
PenhTech @penhtech
- a fix for continue warnings in php7.3
Thomas Fellinger @netzgestaltung
- a fix for Really Simple Captcha plugin.
Privacy Notices
This plugin, in itself, does not:
- track users by stealth;
- write any user personal data to the database;
- send any data to external servers;
- use cookies.
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Memory Usage Benchmark
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Stina Gunnarsdottir
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