Zero Conf Mail
It took me quite some time to check a few existing contact forms and I didn’t like any of them. No, I don’t want you to load jquery on every page of my blog. I want it localized, pretty please. Oh, and I want this JavaScript onfocus/onblur effect I wrote about. And why do I have to do any configuration at all anyway?
Install, add
on some page or post, done.Installation
Unzip, upload to your plugin directory, enable the plugin. Include it on a page or post by adding the shortcode
Please fill out all fields!
Changelog
0.5.0.2
- Install problem hotfix.
0.5.0.1
- Doc fixes.
- Update italian translation.
0.5.0
- Add a widget as requested by Paul and others.
- Add page and sender info to the mail footer.
0.4.2
- Use a WordPress function to send mails. This should fix potential problems with inconsistent From: addresses. Thanks a lot to MG Lim for reporting this.
0.4.1.2
- Use correct version number.
0.4.1.1
- Fix activation bug, thanks to Robert Reilly for reporting.
0.4.1
- Load translations on plugin activation, needed for properly translated field labels.
- Fix annoying bug, thanks to simon for the detailed report.
- Bugfixes, optimizations, documention updates.
- Add delete field option.
0.4.0
- Add mail flood protection.
- Add turkish translation, thanks to Tayfun Duran.
0.3.3
- Add icon by famfamfam to the Admin Drop Down Menu.
- Modify directory structure.
- Fix PHP5ism, thanks to Tico. Now tested on PHP4 as well.
0.3.2
- Add hebrew translation, thanks to Asaf Chetkoff!
- Include CSS only on pages that contain the shortcode!
0.3.1
- This plugin should work by default on as many blogs as possible. Therefore I added a default CSS file that will be included on the form page if you upgrade to this version. Your CSS configuration will be preserved across future upgrades.
0.3.0
- Simplified and clarified the interface. After all it’s called zero conf for a reason.
- Add italian translation, thanks to Gianni!
- Fix shortcode position on pages
0.1.11
- Clean up code, add documentation
- Admin CSS
- Update german translation
0.1.9
- Don’t use trunk as stable, revert to earlier release and add bugfixes.
0.1.8
- Fix short PHP open tags, thanks to Kelson for finding them!
0.1.7
- Add email check for receiver to catch misconfigurations.
0.1.6
- Include sender’s name in mail and fix I18N, thanks to Busse EDV for reporting.
- Success/failure messages are configurable.
- Produce valid HTML
0.1.5
- Fix upgrade data loss bug.
0.1.4
- Hopefully fix PHP5ism in array sorting.
0.1.3
- I’ve seen reports of upgrade troubles. Put the reset button where it can always be accessed. This will be hidden when things get more stable.
- Split main file and only include the things that are needed.
0.1.1
- Allow custom fields
- Restructure the code, document it
- New, flexible data structure
- Enable custom fields as requested
- I18N, german translation
- Check if sender’s mail is an email address
- Check admin page & form permissions
- Add configurable link to plugin website
0.0.3
- Add success and failure messages
- All fields are mandatory.
0.0.2
- i18n mostly done
- Added german translation
0.0.1
- Initial release
I am Nicolas Kuttler, a web developer, system administrator and IT consultant from France, currently living in Germany.
Friedi: Hm, I don’t use such a plugin 
Anyway it works as long as I...
Larry: Can you do bumble bees, flower petals, or raindrops for other seasons.
Jim: With this plugin, can you change around the css styling without...
ukmaceman: Have just installed this great plugin on www.mywordpress.co.uk ....
Kate: Hi. This is an excellent plugin! I have a question though. The theme...
Hi Nicolas,
I just want thank you for developing and sharing this with all.
Wishing you the best!
Joe Coon
[...] Zero Conf Mail (v0.0.3) [...]
Hey,
it produces a fatal error, when I try to activate it:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ARRAY, expecting ‘&’ or T_VARIABLE or T_CONST in /mnt/web4/30/71/525471/htdocs/martin/blog/wp-content/plugins/zero-conf-mail/inc/page.php on line 149
Thanks for your report! Which plugin and PHP version do you use? Does the error happen with a version > 0.1.4?
Hi, I just grabbed this to try it out, and ran into a similar syntax error. From experience, the first thing I did was look for short open tags – i.e. “<?" instead of "<?php" – and found 4: 3 in page.php (lines 145, 148 and 199) and 1 in admin.php (line 354).
With those fixed, the plugin seems to work.
Thanks a lot Kelson! I have fixed that and made a new release.
After upgrading to 0.1.7, the form no longer displays properly.
Instead of having one text field per line, the textfields “Your name” and “Your email” now show side by side.
How can I fix this?
This is a CSS issue, the plugin doesn’t generate any <br> or similar. Something like #zcmail input { display: block; } should fix it.
I pasted my CSS for the form above on this page. Try to add this to your style.css
Today I accidentally released the development version as stable. The 0.1.9 release fixes this, I hope not too many people installed a broken version.
Thank you, all is well!
hallo,
sehr schönes plugin. ich benutze es auf meiner seite. habe aber leider ein problem mit der formatierung. die felder werden irgendwie seltsam angeordnet. vielleicht kannst du ja mal einen tipp geben…?
danke und gruß
henning
hallo,
habe das problem schon selbst über die style.css gelöst…:-)
Wunderbar! Das Problem scheint öfter aufgetreten zu sein, deshalb gibt es seit 0.3.1 eine Stylesheet-Datei im plugin.
Instead of having one text field per line, the textfields “Your name” and “Your email” now show side by side.
How can I fix this?
Hi costas, the fields have to by styled though CSS. See the example on this page, you can add it to your template’s style.css.
I guess I’ll have to think about a solution, maybe include a good default stylesheet that I include with the plugin.
I have made new release, 0.3.1. It includes a CSS file that will be included by default, I think this should fix almost all layout problems.
For existing users, you may want to deactivate this feature if you have already styled the form in your template.
[...] אתר התוסף: http://www.nkuttler.de/wordpress/zero-conf-mail/ [...]
Hi Nicolas,
i’ve just upgraded zcmail to 0.3.2 and i have to say that the translation program “poEdit” has some problems with your .POT file.
it says that a lot of the lines are “missing `msgstr’ section”. can you fix the file? i need it to translate the plugin to hebrew.
thanks, asaf
Hi Asaf, thank you for the translation! I don’t think you’re supposed to edit the .pot file, you should edit zero-conf-mail-he_IL.po. I have already included it in the plugin’s translations folder.
The .pot is just a template that’s used to generate .po files if I understand correctly.
I love the plugin. I like how customizable the styling is. But the last few times you’ve posted updates the new styles override what I set in style.css so I have to go in and edit your css file rather than the main css file. Not a huge problem but it makes me not want to install updates.
Thanks again for the great contact form.
Micah, just disable the CSS file in the customization options. That setting will be preserved across plugin upgrades. I made the decision to include it by default so that the plugin works out of the box for as many people as possible.
Thanks for understanding!
This looks great, and so many people seem to have been really pleased with this plug in, that I kind of think I must be doing something wrong.
I think I missed something…
I’ve installed it, and added the shortcode… I can see it on the page…
how does it know what email to send to?
and when I use it I am getting an error:
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@youngblood.co.uk and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
Apache/1.3.41 Server at youngblood.co.uk Port 80
Hi Tim,
the plugin sends the mails to the admin who installs the plugin, usually the blog owner. It uses the address he is registered with.
Do you have access to your server’s error log? I have no idea what’s going on. If I understand you correctly the error happens when you try to send mails? Or before?
Unfortunately your webserver looks like it isn’t configured properly. And it is ancient and not really supported any more. However, if you find your log I’ll look into it.
Hi.
How I can delete a field that I have added by mistake?
Hi diego,
unfortunately you can’t – yet! This will be added in one of the next releases. All you can do atm is to reset the form, sorry.
The problem is that the plugin would stop working if certain fields get deleted, and I haven’t worked around that yet.
Actually, try this version. It includes a delete fields option. It’s uploaded but might take some time until it’s published at wp.org.
i get the following error using the script..
Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at “localhost” port 25, verify your “SMTP” and “smtp_port” setting in php.ini or use ini_set() in \wp\wp-content\plugins\zero-conf-mail\inc\page.php on line 106
Any Ideas, I like what you have done just found your blog going to look it over..
Hi Ray, you server isn’t configured properly. Unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about that, please check your php.ini.
i checked the php.ini and it has the correct ports 25 set.
Has anyone else had this issue?
Could you try to add something as described here to the zcmail_sendmail() function in inc/page.php?
Please inform me if adding the correct values fixes your issues, I will add a config option then. (or bug your hoster, sending mails via PHP should just work).
I have added your plugin succesfully. I have 1 question, is it possible to give a link in the mail from wich post the mail was sent?
Good idea, will implement this soon.
Hi Nicolas,
thank you for the plugin. Nice, clean and simple.
Is that possible that you would add this feature? In case required field/s was not filled could you display what field it was?
Right now if I do NOT fill anything just click send message the email is sent. I did not change mandatory settings for any fields.
I was testing the form and it said “Temporarily closed”. It would be nice to tell users why.
Thank you,
Radek
Hi Radek, giving information about which fields have to be completed is somewhere on my todo list but really low priority.
If you click send message withoug changing the values no mail should be sent. It works this way on my blog, but I’ll do a little testing later this week.
Temporarily closed means that you hit the flood filter. I’m not sure I want spammers to know that. Will think about it.
Hi Nicolas,
i’m having same problem as Radek in that it will send a mail when required fields are left blank, or left with default text.
i tried removing the label text from the boxes so that they would remain empty but form still sends a mail.
fyi in my inbox i get the mails, they contain the following:
“Bug 02 – no subject field defined”
“Bug 03 – no message field defined”
I really like this plug-in, it’s clean, and has a great settings control panel. Just what i wanted. Would like to resolve this and would appreciate your thoughts.
Thanks,
Simon
That’s very odd. You shouldn’t be able to trigger those bug messages as you can’t delete fields in a public release yet. Do you use the development version? I’ll look into later this week.
Could you try to deactivate the plugin from within the wordpress admin, and delete it from the admin after that?
Or instead, simply reset it.
After that please try to reproduce the bug. I don’t really know where to start looking.
On resetting the plugin it works perfectly
but i can easily reproduce the bug from a fresh reset as follows:
Enable customisation options, then save settings to view them, then change or just click on some element within the ‘Input Fields Configuration’ setting (eg just clicking on a radio button that is already selected then saving settings ie not changing anything will do), and then the form will mail out anything. Have reset it 4 times or so to confirm.
i’ll still use it, just wont touch the options panel for now!
I’m using wp 2.8.5
Many thanks,
Simon
Thank you very much for the detailed report!
The bug should be fixed in 0.4.1 which will be available at wp.org in a few minutes.
Thank you Nicolas, it works beautifully now!
This is a great plug-in, very small, very flexible, easy to get working, and intuitive to use and tweak, my first choice by a long way.
simon
That was quick!
Thank you Nicolas.
Working smoothly now.
R.
Hello Nicolas-
I’m a new WordPress user, using the Headway theme, and I’m getting this:
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /zero-conf-mail/inc/page.php on line 242
You are absolutely right. 0.4.1 introduced a new bug which is fixed in 0.4.1.1. Will be available at wp.org soon. Thanks for reporting!
Hi there. Just an input. it would be good to change the sent from mail address “somevisitor@hotmail.com” to “wordpress@domain.com”. The reason is most mail applications setup in mail servers refuse to send emails which are not originated from the mail servers. Emails like domain.com are checked via Reverse DNS to see if the email is authenticated.
The way it is now, your plugin will cause most emails sent from it as spam or rejected. By changing the from address to a valid email address eg “wordpress@mydomain.com” will solve this problem. Other than that. i think so far yours is the best mail plugin there is for wordpress. Ta
Hm, I think you are right about the from address. It’s configured this way because in my setup mails never go through any external server. It would be better to put the sender’s mail in the reply-to, right?
I’m happy you like my plugin
Actually, I think I shouldn’t define a From at all, let the mailserver handle that, and use Reply-To. Comments welcome.
hmm yeah i suppose it good as well. just use a reply to. For the FROM, it would be safe to use wordpress@mydomain.com (whatever the installed domain is).. since this is what the wordpress uses to send out the first details to administrator. hope this help .
and well done again. Am very impressed on your dedication on your plugin. great work! keep it up.
Yes, I’m using a WP function now to send the mails. Uses correct From and I add a Reply-To header. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!
This is “FREE”..??
Yes, this is free software
can we use “coma” to multiply email..??
For receivers? No idea, I never tried it.
Hello
Is it possible to translate “Your email here” “Your name” etc. into danish?
Sure, the form can be customized.
Thank you for nice mailform
I like simple.
This is easy to setup, especially for Wordpress begginer.
Hi Nicolas, now that the form sends from wordpress_at_domain i no longer get the sender’s email (whatever they entered). Is there any way to put that info into the mail that is sent? or to remove the email box on the form? Preferably to send the email field input in the mail as currently I can’t reply to anyone. or am i missing something?
Many thanks
Simon
ok just read your comments above and see you have to hit reply to see the email address!
that wasn’t so obvious though works perfectly!
thx again for your plugins and support.
simon
Hello simon, you’re right, I think I will include the mail address in the mail body beginning with the next release. I guess not all email clients display the reply-to header.
Hi! How can I add contact form to sidebar? In WP2.9 adding text/HTML widget with [zcmail] in it does not working
Hi Paul, use the new widget that’s included in the 0.5.0 release.
Hi I love the plugin and it does exactly what it says but for one thing. When the fields are not filled out correctly it gives a message “Please fill out all fields!” in white text on a pink background. This is not very easily visible and I would like to change the text color to black on a pink background. Can you tell me how to do this please? p.s. Happy New Year
The color is defined through you theme’s css, but I will add a fix to make the font black by default in the next release.
Nicolas, thank you for getting back to me I will endeavour to change the css in the theme although I would appreciate a little point in the right direction. Would it be input: for example?
Hi Nicolas, could you tell me how [zcmail] thing works? I want to trigger some function on a page or where ever I want and I do not know how to do it.
I guess the answer is here, right? http://www.nkuttler.de/2009/10/21/shortcodes-include-css-and-js-only-on-the-correct-blog-pages/
Thank you. Radek
Hi Radek, [zcmail] is a shortcode and it’s usage is documentented on this site: http://codex.wordpress.org/Shortcode_API
Hi,
I installed your zero-conf-mail plugin, it installed fine, works fine but… I never receive any e-mails! I’ve tested it, sending e-mails to the address of my Wordpress site administrator and I receive nothing.
Any ideas?
Спасибо за плагин! Сделал русскую локализацию плагина. Если интересно – скачать можно здесь – http://www.shoptec.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/translations.rar
Описание – на странице – http://www.shoptec.ru/?p=2355
Thank you very much for the nice plugin.
1- The widget should have the following options:
A- to set the forms’ width. No sidebar is 500px (which is the default width), so it must have its own width setting, independent from the css that applies to the form placed in a page. I modified the style and added width:100% so it stretched the form in the sidebar to the sidebar limits.
B- We should be able to give a title to the widget, I dont know why you disabled that.
2- Iti s great if you add the ability to add a custom antispam question, like I set the question and the only answer that must be input for the message to be sent.
3- It is nice also if you add “send me a copy of the message” checkbox under the form.
If you do these, your plugin will be the ultimate contact me !
Mouad, thanks for your suggestions! I’ll look into them.
Thank you ! I hope you do them soon, or at least the widget fixes.. because, btw, setting the widget’s width to 100% after setting the form’s w max-width to something higher than 150px didnt work, and the widget kept showing very wide , extending beyond the limits of the sidebar.
It must be changed and the width of each of them to be set separately, otherwise, the widget is not usable unless you significantly minimize its width, which will reflect also on the form within a page, and which will not look fairly good.
Thank you for the plugin.
I agree with Mouad on the custom antispam question. Your plugin is just what I had been looking for on my website, but recently I am starting to get spam.
If you can add this feature in, this would be the PERFECT plugin. Thanks again.
Here is my suggestion as i have not seen this on any contact form thus far, and it really does seam like a no brainer….
k, was seeing if you could add user recognition.. so if your logged in, your name and email are filled in the fields(or those fields dont display and just the subject and msg fields are displayed whatever is the best way)
also i know that your goal is a non bloated contact form, and i did read ur reasonings against form security, but i would really love to see recaptcha… you could just add the option for it to be on or off..
i would also be down for this anti spam method which is described in #2(with the ability to set like a few phrases and answers so its not the same one every time) this way you would have to deal with recaptcha stuff…
i also like #3 to have the option to enable that..
“2- Iti s great if you add the ability to add a custom antispam question, like I set the question and the only answer that must be input for the message to be sent.
3- It is nice also if you add “send me a copy of the message” checkbox under the form.”
thanks,
madLyfe