163 – Best episode yet. Full of interesting information.

I’ve used cForms7, but not Gravity Forms, even though I keep hearing good things about it. 

On the last site I built, which had 9 different forms, I used the free version of NinjaForms. I was very impressed with it. It is very powerful, and has “favorite” fields, which are fields that you create and then can save for use on other forms (for example a list of colors, or states, etc). They also have a bunch of ad-ons which look like they really expand the functionality and their support was phenomenal.

I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but thought I’d share. I’d love to know how you feel NinjaForms stack up against Gravity Forms.  http://ninjaforms.com/

I use Jetpack for most sites, since they only need simple forms. Several clients have Gravity Forms licenses, and I enjoy working with it. I’ll probably buy a developer license at some point. Before Jetpack I used Contact Form 7 a lot, and I still use it occasionally. I recently tried
Fast Secure Contact Form (http://wordpress.org/plugins/si-contact-form/) after hearing good things, and it seems like it’s between Contact Form 7 and Gravity Forms for ease of use.

I’m using Jetpack on my site cos I didn’t want to install an extra plugin just for a contact form. Previously using Contact Form 7 until I came across a jQuery conflict, though. 
Jetpack form is straightforward, but I don’t like their default submit button, so I always replace it with my custom made button, which is a bit troublesome as I need to edit a few lines of code in grunion-contact-form.php every time a plugin gets updated. Wondering whether there is any way to make this change permanent. Anyway, this is a good topic, thanks Dustin!

I use gravity forms myself now for one or two simple forms and one more complex form. For ordinary contact forms I mainly stick with Contact Form 7 and also used Fast Secure Contact Form on some sites.
There are other Plugins like
– Ninja Forms (free, with premium extensions)
  http://wordpress.org/plugins/ninja-forms/, http://ninjaforms.com
– Formidable Forms (free and pro version)
  http://wordpress.org/plugins/formidable/, http://formidablepro.com/
– Quform and others on codecanyon.net

that seem to get much less attention than gravity forms but seem to be worth exploring too.
Any experiences here?

One client wanted a contact form where the entered data is not only sent as an email but also as an vCard (.vcf)-Attachment for direct import to Outlook.

I wondered that non of the available form plugins seems to have this by default and I didn’t find any easy solution yet. I’m sure it would be doable as an extension for gravity forms or some of the other plugins.
Any hints or ideas or experiences on this?

dhartzler10 Hi Dustin, thank you for kindly looking into it! I’m replacing the codes line 880-883 in grunion-contact-form.php (top) with my version linking to a custom made button (bottom).
 ************************
            $r .= “tt<input type=’submit’ value='” . esc_attr( $form->get_attribute( ‘submit_button_text’ ) ) . “‘ class=’pushbutton-wide’/>n”;
            if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
                $r .= “tt” . wp_nonce_field( ‘contact-form_’ . $id, ‘_wpnonce’, true, false ) . “n”; // nonce and referer
            }

 ************************
            $r .= “tt<input type=’image’ value='” . esc_attr( $form->get_attribute( ‘submit_button_text’ ) ) . “‘ src=’http://lastlights.net/images/submit.png’/>n”;
            $r .= “tt” . wp_nonce_field( ‘contact-form_’ . $id, ‘_wpnonce’, true, false ) . “n”; // nonce and referer
 ************************
It would be very nice if this change can be permanent some way. I’m by no means a serious web developer, so I have no clue, haha. Anyway, thanks for your help!

dhartzler10 Hi Dustin, I have replied to this, but somehow does not appear (except when I’m logged into livefyre). Maybe considered as spam due to the lines of PHP code? Not sure whether you can see from your admin end.

OSPInteresting Thanks Cynthia. I’m a huge fan of your show too. I’m so thankful you recommended Canva. It rocks!

I have been using http://wordpress.org/plugins/formidable/
Drag and Drop as well as customizable.
It has never failed me.  I have Contact Form 7 but there was an update that brought all the sites I had used it for offline so I have never gone back.
The form can be seen on my site at http://www.functionalwebpages.com.au/contact/

Hi Dustin, did you know that you can also add Facebook Messenger to your website and allow your customers to message you directly? http://bit.ly/1RfW4Gw