Posted on by Renzo Johnson

Contact Form 7 Setup: Quick Start Guide for WordPress

Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for adding contact forms to your website. In fact, this Contact Form 7 setup guide will have your first form working in under five minutes. Additionally, you will learn how each tab in the form editor works and how to connect your form to Mailchimp using Chimpmatic.

Installing Contact Form 7

If you have not installed Contact Form 7 yet, the process is straightforward:

  1. In your WordPress dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New.
  2. Search for “Contact Form 7”.
  3. Click Install Now, then click Activate.

After activation, a new Contact menu item appears in your WordPress sidebar. As a result, you can now create and manage all your forms from this menu.

Creating Your First Form

Go to Contact > Add New to create a new form. Contact Form 7 gives you a default form template with four fields already in place. Specifically, the default form includes:

  • [text* your-name] — The visitor’s name (required).
  • [email* your-email] — The visitor’s email address (required).
  • [text your-subject] — The email subject line (optional).
  • [textarea your-message] — The message body (optional).

Moreover, the asterisk (*) after the tag type means the field is required. In other words, visitors must fill in that field before they can submit the form.

The Form Tab

The Form tab is where you build your form structure. Furthermore, every field in your form uses a mail-tag — a shortcode-like tag enclosed in square brackets.

For example, the default Contact Form 7 setup looks like this:

Form

<label> Your Name (required)
    [text* your-name] </label>

<label> Your Email (required)
    [email* your-email] </label>

<label> Subject
    [text your-subject] </label>

<label> Your Message
    [textarea your-message] </label>

[submit "Send"]

You can add more fields by clicking the tag generator buttons at the top of the Form tab. In particular, Contact Form 7 supports text fields, email fields, URLs, phone numbers, dates, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown menus, and file uploads.

The Mail Tab

The Mail tab controls what happens when someone submits your form. Specifically, it defines the email notification that WordPress sends to you. The key settings are:

  • To: The email address that receives form submissions. By default, this is your WordPress admin email.
  • From: The sender address shown in the notification email.
  • Subject: The email subject line. Use the [your-subject] mail-tag to include the visitor’s subject.
  • Message Body: The email content. Insert mail-tags like [your-name], [your-email], and [your-message] to include the form data.

Consequently, every mail-tag you create in the Form tab becomes available in the Mail tab. If you add a field called [text your-company] in the Form tab, you can use [your-company] in the Mail tab to include that value in the notification email.

Understanding Mail-Tags

Mail-tags are the bridge between your form fields and email notifications. However, they also play a critical role when connecting to Mailchimp. Each mail-tag corresponds to one form field, and Chimpmatic uses these same mail-tags to map data to your Mailchimp audience fields.

For instance, the mail-tag [your-email] captures the visitor’s email address. In short, this is the same value that Chimpmatic sends to Mailchimp as the subscriber’s email. Similarly, [your-name] maps to the subscriber’s first name or full name in Mailchimp.

Embedding the Form on a Page

After saving your form, Contact Form 7 generates a shortcode at the top of the editor.

Copy this shortcode and paste it into any page or post where you want the form to appear. As a result, visitors to that page will see your contact form and can submit their information immediately.

Connecting to Mailchimp

Once your Contact Form 7 setup is complete, you can connect the form to Mailchimp so every submission adds a subscriber to your audience. Chimpmatic handles this connection automatically.

The basic steps are:

  1. Install Chimpmatic (LITE or Pro).
  2. Open your form and click the Chimpmatic tab.
  3. Enter your Mailchimp API key.
  4. Select your Mailchimp audience.
  5. Map your CF7 mail-tags to Mailchimp merge fields.

For the complete walkthrough, see Connect Contact Form 7 to Mailchimp.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Most importantly, if your form is not working as expected, check these common issues:

  • Form not sending emails. Check the Mail tab — make sure the “To” address is correct. Additionally, some hosting providers block the WordPress wp_mail() function. An SMTP plugin can fix this.
  • Required fields not validating. Confirm that required fields use the asterisk syntax, for example [text* your-name] instead of [text your-name].
  • Shortcode showing as text. Make sure you are pasting the shortcode in the Visual or Block editor, not inside an HTML block with escaped brackets.
  • Submissions not reaching Mailchimp. If Chimpmatic is installed but subscribers are not appearing, see Contact Form 7 Not Sending to Mailchimp for the most common fixes.

Next Steps