One thing that every website should have is a contact form. Leaving yourself open to communication is one of the best things you can do when running a website. WordPress and other solutions don’t provide a contact form out of the box , which is why Kontactr comes in real handy.
Synopses:
Kontactr is a free service that does one thing, and does it well, and that is, providing users an easy to use contact form that can be placed anywhere on your site simply by copying and then pasting the code. Using Kontactr only consists of three steps with the third step being optional.
Create an Account
You will have your own contact form once you have created your account.
Post the Link
Start giving your contact form’s link to people instead of you email address.
More Tools
Login to your account for buttons, widgets and more…
Kontactr’s forms contain the following features:
- CAPTCHA Protection
- Customizable code for Embedding the form
- Codes for Buttons and Links to your form
The Review:
After you login to your account with Kontactr, you’ll be taken to your profile which contains a link to your Kontactr form page. For example, here is a link to my contact page http://kontactr.com/user/Jeffro2pt0 You have two choices. You can either point users to your contact form on the Kontactr site, or you can embed the form onto your own site.
There are a few ways in which you can embed the Kontactr service into your site. The first way is by embedding a widget which contains the appropriate code for your form. Using this method allows you the most control over the look and feel of your contact form. Another way to implement Kontactr is by using the Ajax powered widget. The embed code for the Ajax widget is only 3 lines and it provides the fancy web 2.0 effects that we have come to love. *The only downside to using the Ajax powered widget is that it doesn’t allow you to control any of the text or layout of the form.
If you don’t feel like embedding code into your site’s template, you have a choice of using three different links which will point to your contact form. Two of the links are graphical buttons while the last one is a textual link.
When you receive an email from Kontactr, the subject line will read Kontactr: (Subject that the user put in) This is how you can differentiate between normal emails and emails sent through the Kontactr service. One of the best features of Kontactr is the ability to use the same form link on multiple sites. If you decide to use the form on multiple sites, you’ll be glad to know that the Referrer url will be added to the footer of each email. This allows you to figure out which site and which form was used.
I can’t tell you how effective their CAPTCHA technique is since I have only used the service for a few days but I have yet to receive any spam through my own contact form. Those who are blind will not be able to use this service as it doesn’t provide an audio version of the CAPTCHA images. On a side note, the CAPTCHA images are CASE-SENSITIVE so be sure to remember than when your using one of these forms.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I have to say that using Kontactr is a piece of cake. I don’t know how much simpler they could of made the service without actually doing everything for you. I am currently using Kontactr for my contact form and if you want to see a live example, check out http://jeffc.me/contact-me/ Go ahead and send a message to me if you’d like, perhaps commenting on this article or the service itself. If your in need of a contact form, yet you don’t want to upload specific plugins or files to generate one, this is the service you need to use!
