When it comes to blogging, there is a reason that it has become so popular over the past few years, and that reason is the ability to interact directly with the author and other readers of the blog. All successful bloggers have two things on their website. The first is an About page, which allows readers to get to know a little bit more about the author. A picture on the About page is recommended, but is not always required for success.

The other thing, and the most important thing a blog needs in my opinion, is to have a Contact page, which will allow readers to get in contact with the author. This can be for a variety of reasons, ranging from questions about the blog or content to actually making a comment about the blog or to notify the author of a problem on the blog.

In an effort to make myself more accessible to my readers, when I first started blogging I originally placed an e-mail icon on my website, but I quickly learned that I would get a lot more spam than I would actual e-mails from readers. When I switched to WordPress, I noticed there were several contact forms available, which allow your readers to contact you without actually displaying your e-mail address for spammers to find.

It all started with Ryan Duff’s WP-Contact Form, but this plugin quickly spawned several other improved contact forms. Here are a few other improved contact forms that are available:

I’ve tried all three and felt they worked, but they weren’t exactly what I was looking for. I noticed while contacting Sarah over at BlueJar that she had an amazing contact form, so of course I asked what it was. She sent me over to Douglas Karr’s plugin, which is also called WP-Contact Form.

While the name is the same, it has a lot of added functionality. I’m able to easily add a drop-down menu from the Options panel, include a challenge question to avoid spam, as well as add the ability for the form user to carbon-copy themselves if they choose to. It also shows what is entered into the website field when you receive an e-mail, which for some reason isn’t included in the other plugins I tried.

As an added bonus, with my minimal coding knowledge, I was able to easily edit the length and width of the fields and customize the colors to match my site from within the plugin. I also used the author’s contact form to recommend that this functionality be included in the Options panel of a future release of this plugin.

If you are a WordPress user and don’t have a contact form, or you just aren’t happy with the one you are using, I recommend giving this one a shot.

Download WP-Contact Form