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My Contact Form Has Been Broken For Months

written by Brian Clark
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My Contact Form Has Been Broken For Months

Don’t you just love when things like this happen?

After having the nagging feeling that something was not right, I tested the form on my contact page last weekend, only to have my concerns confirmed. It didn’t work.

I replaced the old form with the new WP-Contact Form III from Kristin Wangen, which is an improvement on Doug Karr’s modification of the original WP-Contact by Ryan Duff (Duff’s site seems to have died late last year). Works like a charm now.

I’m a bit concerned about how much correspondence I’ve missed. I have no idea how long the form was inoperable, but I’m guessing at least two months. Given the amount of consulting requests, biz dev proposals, and reader email I received this week with a working form, something tells me a lot of people received zero response from me when trying to get in touch this year. That’s unacceptable, and I’m upset about it.

So, if you’ve tried to contact me over the last couple of months (and you’re still reading despite my lack of response), please accept my sincere apologies. This is one of those instances where the technology that is supposed to make our lives better instead creates new problems.

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Reader Comments (27)

  2. No wonder I never heard back from you! At least your blog and writing were compelling enough to keep me reading. I just figured you were too busy to answer every question and comment! 😉 At least you figured it out now…not a year from now!

    tasra

  3. I tried out that plugin you had trouble with recently and couldn’t get it to work and thought it was me. I guess it doesn’t work with the newer WordPress builds. Thanks for telling us which one works!

  6. Websites can be great tools for generating leads, but only if the contact forms work of course! For the small business websites that I work with, I usually set a reminder in my calendar to check the forms on a regular basis to make sure they are working. Sort of a low tech solution, but it works.

  7. Dear Brian–

    Classy admission of an error.

    Mike Volpe– thank you for the simple and duh why didn’t I think about it tip.

    I use Macromedia Contribute to edit my website — but found special offers on one page that go back to summer 06– embarrassing.

    Now re write that headline.

    TSC

  9. Aaron – Test it. It’s not a matter of killing anyone 🙂

    Asking people to email you, vs a contact form? Who knows? One works better than the other; in my specific case the form wins. But as with most web-related things, an A/B test gives the insight to stay simple (email link) or go complex (form).

  10. Thanks for posting this actually because I’ve been having problems with mine and how it formats in IE as opposed to Firefox. Looks like this will fix it! Cheers.

  11. GREETINGS, esteemed Mr. Brian, for I was wondering why you had not responded to my urgent enquiry via your contact form.

    I am Barrister Anthony Obo, representing the estate of the late Mukinje Umbatu, most recently Vice-Minister of Petroleum Affairs here in the nation of Liberia …

  12. Surprisingly, most of those emails got through, even past the gmail spam filters.

    I’m still trying to find my routing number…

  13. Mike Volpe is right about testing your online forms regularly. Does anyone know of an automated test tool for doing this, kind of like web site monitoring alerts, but a bit more sophisticated, something that can input into a form for you?

  14. I had the same problem with the same contact form – it took me several months to notice. I’m trying to get the v3.0 one you posted up and running – until then people have to use an email address.

    I actually like the Contact Form option better – it seems faster and more direct than returning to your email client and pasting in an email address you found.

  15. Thanks so much for the mention. I’m glad it’s working well for you. It feels good to give back, you’ve been helping me a lot!

  16. Mine has been broken too, but in my case I knew it all the time, since I tested it when I installed it, but the prob. is my host does not even care. I understand how painful it is!

  19. Hey,

    Checkout wufoo.com if you need a good solution. I use it because I can go back and track all contact info that comes in and you can literally make your own forms with your own custom fields.

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