How to Add Email Forms to WordPress
Adding an email form to WordPress is an easy way to make your blog more interactive. Unfortunately, I have not found a way to place email forms within your blog if you are using the hosted version of WordPress. This is due to the fact that the online version of WordPress strips form related HTML tags from your posts.
Fortunately, WordPress is easily self-hosted and with the benefit of a plugin called Raw HTML, it is pretty easy to place forms within your blog. You can choose to either add your form to an individual blog post or a static page linked from every page of your blog. These two options are outlined below.
A fully functioning demonstration form hosted on WordPress can be seen here.
Adding an Email Form to a WordPress Blog Post
Before you go through this tutorial you must have a copy of WordPress downloaded and installed on your own web server. This tutorial does not work if you are using a version of the blog hosted by WordPress. You may download your copy of WordPresshere. Instructions for installing WordPress can be found at WordPress.org.
1. Create Your Form HTML
The first step in integrating an email form into your website is to build the actual HTML code for the form. The easiest and quickest way to create the form code is to usemyContactForm.com.
myContactForm.com features a free online wizard that steps you through the entire form building process. myContactForm.com has just about any feature you could ask for including auto-responders, CAPTCHA, file attachements, CSS styling, data exports (Excel, CSV, Text, HTML, etc.), pre-made templates, and much more.
Click Here to read a tutorial on creating the form HTML using myContactForm.com.
2. Download and Install the Raw HTML Plugin
The Raw HTML plugin is needed because WordPress automatically strips the HTML from your blog posts. By installing the Raw HTML plugin, you are able to insert HTML straight into your posts without having the HTML changed by WordPress.
To install Raw HTML:
a. Download the Plugin Here.
b. Follow the installation instructions found within the plugin readme file.
3. Login to Your WordPress Account
a. Go to the login page for your self-hosted WordPress blog.
4. Create a New Post
a. Under Posts select Add New
5. Write the New Post
a. Write your new post as you would normally do in WordPress.
b. Once you get to the point in your post where you would like your email form, click the HTML tab.
c. At the point in the post where you would like the form, type in the following code:
<!--start_raw-->
d. Directly after the above code, paste the form HTML code (Edit > Paste, or CTRL+V, or Right Click and Select Paste). If you do not have your form code created and copied, please read this tutorial to learn how to do so.
e. Once you have pasted the form HTML code, type in the following line of code directly after the form HTML.
<!--end_raw-->
f. Once you have pasted your code, you will need to make a few changes manually in order to ensure that WordPress formats it correctly.
1. Get rid of any new lines (hard returns) that are within the HTML code. When WordPress goes to publish the post, it will interpret these as new lines and replace them with line breaks <br>, adding excessive white space to your form.
2. Make sure the elements of your form work with the template layout for your blog. I've found that making the form too wide or individual question fields too wide will ofter break the form. You may need to experiment with your form in order to ensure it works with the layout.
5. Publish the Blog Post
Once your form code has been pasted into your post, Click 
.
A fully functioning demonstration form hosted on WordPress can be seen here.
6. Verify the Form Location Setting
If you are using myContactForm.com, you will need to login and make sure that you've set the Form Location setting to the proper URL for your blog.
a. Login to myContactForm.com
b. Click the Edit Button
c. Click the Basic Form Information Button
d. Enter all variations of the URL where the form will appear. In WordPress, this is typically the home page of the blog and the unique blog post's URL.
e. Click 
Adding an Email Form as a Page Within WordPress
Before you go through this tutorial you must have a copy of WordPress downloaded and installed on your own web server. This tutorial does not work if you are using a version of the blog hosted by WordPress. You may download your copy of WordPress here. Instructions for installing WordPress can be found atWordPress.org.
1. Create Your Form HTML
The first step in integrating an email form into your website is to build the actual HTML code for the form. The easiest and quickest way to create the form code is to usemyContactForm.com.
myContactForm.com features a free online wizard that steps you through the entire form building process. myContactForm.com has just about any feature you could ask for including auto-responders, CAPTCHA, file attachements, CSS styling, data exports (Excel, CSV, Text, HTML, etc.), pre-made templates, and much more.
Click Here to read a tutorial on creating the form HTML using myContactForm.com.
2. Download and Install the Raw HTML Plugin
The Raw HTML plugin is needed because WordPress automatically strips the HTML from your blog posts. By installing the Raw HTML plugin, you are able to insert HTML straight into your posts without having the HTML changed by WordPress.
To install Raw HTML:
a. Download the Plugin Here.
b. Follow the installation instructions found within the plugin readme file.
3. Login to your WordPress Account
a. Go to the login page for your self-hosted WordPress blog.
4. Create a New Page
a. Under Pages select Add New
5. Write the New Page
a. Write your new page as you would normally do in WordPress.
b. Once you get to the point in your page where you would like your email form, click the HTML tab.
c. At the point in the page where you would like the form, type in the following code:
<!--start_raw-->
d. Directly after the above code, paste the form HTML code (Edit > Paste, or CTRL+V, or Right Click and Select Paste). If you do not have your form code created and copied, please read this tutorial to learn how to do so.
e. Once you have pasted the form HTML code type in the following line of code directly after the form HTML.
<!--end_raw-->
f. Once you have pasted your code, you will need to make a few changes manually in order to ensure that WordPress formats it correctly.
1. Get rid of any new lines (hard returns) that are within the HTML code. When WordPress goes to publish the post, it will interpret these as new lines and replace them with line breaks <br>, adding excessive white space to your form.
2. Make sure the elements of your form work with the template layout for your blog. I've found that making the form too wide or individual question fields too wide will ofter break the form. You may need to experiment with your form in order to ensure it works with the layout.
5. Publish the Blog Page
Once your form code has been pasted into your page, Click .
A fully functioning demonstration form hosted on WordPress can be seen here.
6. Verify the Form Location Setting
If you are using myContactForm.com, you will need to login and make sure that you've set the Form Location setting to the proper URL for your blog.
a. Login to myContactForm.com
b. Click the Edit Button
c. Click the Basic Form Information Button
d. Enter the URL of the new page that you created:
e. Click
