Communication.

It’s one of the many strengths of the web.

And if you have an active website, you need a way for visitors to get in touch with you.

Posting an email address on a contact page works okay, but there are a few problems with this simple approach.

First, you’ll get tons of spam emails from spammers that “scrape” the web for email addresses.

And secondly, you won’t know how new contacts found you. The contact form can have a pre-defined subject line that makes it clear where the email is coming from.

So how do you add a contact form to your WordPress site?

With a plugin!

And there are lots of great contact form plugins to choose from.

In this tutorial, I’ll recommend my favorite contact form plugin and show you how to set it up on your site.

How to add a contact form

As mentioned already, the first step is to install a plugin. For contact forms, I recommend WPForms.

WPForms also has premium options available for more functionality. However, you can create a basic contact form easily with the free version.

You can search for WPForms via the Plugins menu (click Add New first) to install it on your site.

Once installed, you’re ready to create your first form.

Create a form

With WPForms installed, you’ll find a new top-level menu added to your WordPress admin dashboard.

Click the Add New button and you’ll be taken to the form creator.

WPForms makes things incredibly easy for us and provides an option to begin with a basic contact form configuration.

After selecting this option, you’ll see the form preview on the right-side of the screen with the pre-added fields.

You can click any field on the right-side to reveal additional settings. On the left-side, you can see all the standard fields available for inclusion.

There are also some fancy fields like address fields and date pickers, but these are only available in the pro version.

You can add/remove any fields you’d like, but this default configuration is fine for a basic contact form.

Next, we’ll take a quick look at some of the form configuration options.

Configure the form

The most important options are the notifications and confirmations.

In the Settings panel, you’ll find three different menus available. The Notifications menu lets you configure the email that you’ll receive when someone submits the form.

I love the flexibility here. You can customize the subject line dynamically with information from any field, and setup the reply-to and from emails based on the visitor’s input.

Next, the Confirmation menu contains the options to configure the message that visitors see after submitting your form.

You can write a custom message, show an existing page on your site, or redirect the visitor to any URL (internal or external). These options provide all the flexibility you need to create a custom form confirmation message.

Add the form to your site

The final step is to add the form you just created to your site.

WPForms provides shortcodes for adding forms into any post or page on your site. There are a few places you can find the shortcode for your forms, but the simplest is the Embed button at the top of the form builder.

Clicking it reveals a small popup window including the shortcode and a quick Youtube video explaining how to use it.

All you need to do is copy and paste the shortcode into any post or page. If you’re using the Gutenberg editor, WordPress will automatically create a shortcode block for you when you paste it in, like this:

You won’t see the form visually in the editor, but it shows up just fine when you view the post on the front-end of the site.

Adding forms with WordPress

Like most features in WordPress, a contact form can be added with a plugin.

There are lots of contact form plugins available, but WPForms stands out as my favorite. If you follow along with the steps above, you’ll have no trouble adding a simple form to your own site.

Do you have any questions about how to add a contact form to WordPress? Post in the comments below.