One of the most recurring issues with Contact Form 7 is not working in WordPress. The Contact Form 7 is a very popular plugin used to send contact information to the site administrator.
Below are the common mistakes done unknowingly by the developer or site owner.
- Contact Form 7 plugin conflict with other plugin or theme
- jQuery or JavaScript error which stops Contact Form 7’s ajax mechanism
- Invalid HTML structure
- The mail recognized as spam
- The mail could not be delivered to the outgoing mail server
- wp_head() and get_footer() are missing in footer.php and header.php file
- Misconfiguration in Contact Form 7
01 get_footer() or wp_head() Missing
Apart from several usages of wp_head() and get_footer(), one usage is to enqueue JavaScript or jQuery into your header and footer respectively.
So if these functions are missed from your themes/your-theme/header.php and themes/your-theme/footer.php then Contact Form 7 not be able to load JavaScript and its ajax will stop working.
02 Contact Form 7 Plugin Conflict With Other Plugins or Theme
In your WordPress, you might have many plugins and themes which load their own JavaScript. Some of them may have a conflict with other plugins.
In most cases, you may be able to find JavaScript errors with your browser’s console. You just need to open the browser’s console and check for JavaScript errors. So these errors might be stopping Contact Form 7 from working.
Another way to solve this issue is to deactivate the plugins one by one and then reactivate them to check conflicts. Same way, try to switch your custom theme to an inbuilt WordPress theme.
03 Invalid HTML Structure
We are presuming that you have created a custom WordPress theme. There might be a broken HTML tag that stops Contact Form 7 from working. Another possibility is one of your installed plugins might have broken the HTML structure.
You might have a question in your mind that how HTML structure can stop Contact Form 7 from working. Contact Form 7’s JavaScript manipulates the HTML structure so if there is some broken HTML it’s stopped working.
In such a case, you need to validate the HTML structure. To validate the HTML structure view the page source in your browser and copy it all. Open this link W3C Markup Validation Service and paste it to validate your HTML.
04 Contact Form 7 Emails Go To SPAM
- Huge numbers of people facing the issue of SPAM mail. This usually happens due to the wrong configuration and email providers. Please check the settings of your contact form 7, especially with the field “Additional Headers”. “Additional Headers” should only have “Reply-To”, “Bcc” and “Cc”.
If you have added any mail tags like “[your-mail]” into the “Additional Headers” then it should be the same and correct as generated by Contact Form 7. An ideal “Additional Headers” field setting should be like the below screenshot. - If you still facing the issue then try to add a spam detection plugin named “Akismet”. Here is the setup link spam filtering with contact form 7 with Akismet.
- Possibly the mail could not be delivered to the outgoing mail server. In this case, you need to install the SMTP plugin. This is another way to stop SPAM mail. You just need to install this plugin and add an SMTP setting and you’re done.
If you want to set up SMTP without plugins then check out our guide: How to Setup SMTP in WordPress Without Any Plugins.
05 When You Took name=name Into The Input Field
This is a very common mistake done by the contact form 7 plugin users. While configuring contact form 7 they took the name of the input field to “name”. To make contact form 7 working you need to change it to something meaningful like [text* customer-name], [text* sender-name], [text* owner-name], [text* property-name], etc.
Additionally, read our guide:
- How To Check If An Element Is Hidden In jQuery
- Check If Array Is Empty Or Undefined In JavaScript
- How To Detect IE Browser In JavaScript
- Simple Date formatting In JavaScript
- AJAX PHP Post Request With Example
- Difference Between == vs === in JavaScript
- How To Remove A Specific Item From An Array In JavaScript
- How To Check Array Contains A Value In JavaScript
- Laravel 9 Multi Language Routes With Auth Routes
- How To Update Pivot Table In Laravel
- How To Install Vue In Laravel 8 Step By Step
- How To Handle Failed Jobs In Laravel
- Best Ways To Define Global Variable In Laravel
- How To Get Latest Records In Laravel
- Laravel Twilio Send SMS Tutorial With Example
- How To Pass Laravel URL Parameter
- Laravel 9 Resource Controller And Route With Example
- Laravel 9 File Upload Tutorial With Example
- How To Schedule Tasks In Laravel With Example
- Laravel Collection Push() And Put() With Example
That’s all from our end. We hope this article helped you to resolve your Contact Form 7 not working issue in a simpler way.
Please let us know in the comments if everything worked as expected, your issues, or any questions. If you think this article saved your time & money, please do comment, share, like & subscribe. Thank you in advance 🙂. Keep Smiling! Happy Coding!
