SimpleForm FAQ

Open the 'Settings' page listed below the 'Contacts' menu. You will find three tabs with the following sections:

• General: this tab contains the general settings, there is no need to change them unless you wish to.
• Emails: use this tab to configure SMTP server and emails.
• Messages: use this tab to customize messages and success submit action. We'll deal with this later in the next FAQ section.

Make the changes desired and once done click the 'Save Changes' button at the bottom.

To operate SimpleForm, it is highly recommended to configure WordPress to work with a SMTP server. If you're not already using a dedicated plugin for outgoing email you can enable the option in the 'Emails' tab in order to make SimpleForm immediately ready to use.

If own site is hosted on shared server it is very likely that the standard mail() function has been disabled by your hosting provider due to the abuse risk it presents. If you are experiencing problems with email reception, that may be exactly the reason why you're not receiving emails. Using a SMTP server makes it less likely that email sent out from your site being marked as spam and lowers the risk of email getting lost somewhere.

SimpleForm offers two types of emails that can be sent after the form is successfully submitted:

• Notification email: is sent internally each time a form submission is made to alert and deliver the submission data.
• Confirmation email: is sent to the form submitter to let him know that the form has been successfully submitted.

Notification email option must always be kept enabled. Confirmation email option can instead be kept disabled but it would be better not to do since is also a great way to thank the person who fills up the form and shows that you care about his request.

Yes, you can do except for the email content. You can specify the recipient, the subject line, the sender name and email address which notification is sent from. You can also include the submission ID inside notification subject. You cannot edit the content of notification email. By default it includes requester name, requester email, request date, request subject, and message.

Yes, you can do. You can specify the sender name, the email address which confirmation is sent from, the subject line, the email content and the email address to use for reply-to. In the content you can choose to include the requester name, the request subject, a copy of the submitted message and the submission ID by using the following shortcodes: [name] [request_subject] [request_message] [request_id].

In case you choose to enable the 'Outgoing Server SMTP' option, we highly recommend you to read our tips by clicking on 'Show Configuration Warnings' button. In addition, pay attention to email address you enter in the 'From Email Address' field, you find both in the notification email section and in the confirmation email section, and in the 'Reply-To Email Address' field, you find in the confirmation email section. To avoid that emails sent out from your site being marked as spam, it is recommended to use an email address authorized by your server (e.g. an email using the same domain that your site uses) or, if you are using a public provider (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc. ...) for your site's admin email, you should use this address, even better an alias, since public SMTP servers have spam filters particularly strong and do not allow to override the email headers. At last, you should avoid using same email in From and To addresses. For many mail providers, this will cause the email to be rejected as spam or placed in a spam folder. Be sure that you use a different email address in the From setting.

You need to enable a SMTP server. You can install a dedicated plugin that takes care of outgoing email or you can enable our SMTP option. If you have already done, verify the correct SMTP server configuration and always keep the notification email option enabled.

SimpleForm doesn’t store submitted messages into the WordPress database by default. You can easily add this feature with SimpleForm Contact Form Submissions addon. Without it, only last message is being temporarily stored. Therefore, it is recommended to verify the correct SMTP server configuration in case of use, and always keep the notification email enabled if you want to be sure to receive messages

If you embed the shortcode into a template file and this one is assigned to a page, when you go to 'Edit Form' listed below the 'Contacts' menu you cannot view the page in the "Used in" field. It is necessary that you add these few lines of code inside the functions.php file you find inside your active theme’s directory:

function simpleform_postmeta( $post_id ) {
// Replace YOUR TEMPLATE FILE with the name of your template file (e.g. contact.php)
if ( 'YOUR TEMPLATE FILE' == get_post_meta( $post_id, '_wp_page_template', true ) ) {
add_post_meta( $post_id, 'simpleform', '[simpleform]', true );
} else {
delete_post_meta( $post_id, 'simpleform');
} }
add_action( 'save_post', 'simpleform_postmeta' );

Go to 'Pages' in the dashboard navigation menu, select the page to which you assigned the template and update.