New release on the simple contact form.  The new version standardizes the way the bot check image is inserted.  Initially, I had written the src attribute like this:

src="/wp-content/plugins/onw-simple-contact-form/check.jpg"

But that won’t work with people who have a WP installation in a subdirectory of their domain’s root directory. For example, a website (http://www.example.com) has a seperate blog (at http://www.example.com/blog/).  The way I’d written the form initially, the browser will look for an image at http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/onw-simple-contact-form/check.jpg when it should be looking in http://www.example.com/wp-content/plugins/onw-simple-contact-form/check.jpg

Then I changed it to

src="./wp-content/plugins/onw-simple-contact-form/check.jpg"

Which fixed the last problem, but only if you have your permalinks set to the ‘ugly’ setting (http://www.example.com/index.php?p=1253), but not if you have them set to look like actual individual pages (like mine do).

So. Now I changed it to look like this:

src="'.get_bloginfo('wpurl').'/wp-content/plugins/onw-simple-contact-form/check.jpg"

Which gets the url of the directory that WordPress is actually installed in and adds the location of the image to it. So now it will work for all different types of installs.

Except those who have moved their wp-content directories.  But I feel that anybody who can do that is a competent enough programmer to just go into the code and change it themselves.

I just released version 1.2 of my simple contact form last night (early this morning?).  The update adds an argument to the shortcode allowing you to specify the recipient email address. You add the shortcode like normal, except before the last bracket ] you add

to_email="youremail@example.com"

You don’t have to define a recipient, though.  If you leave the argument out (or if you make a typo and the address isn’t a valid email) the script will default to your blog’s admin email.

Some time this weekend, I’ll probably add an option to send a copy of the email to the blog’s admin.

~UPDATE~

There was a small bug in the release.  The bot check image was not being rendered due to an incomplete filepath.  That’s been fixed in 1.2.1, now released.

I’m proud to announce the public release of my first stable version of my new WordPress plugin, ONW Simple Contact Form.

The plugin is a lightweight contact form designed to allow users to send an email to the blog’s administrative email address. If you have suggestions, questions, etc., please comment on the plugin’s page rather than this blog post.

I already have a few ideas for how to improve it, such as adding an actual reCaptcha to the form, or adding a parameter to the shortcode to allow the recipient of the email to be changed.

One of the things I do not intend to do is add functionality to allow modification of the basic form. Then it wouldn’t be a simple contact form. It could be quite complex.

To see it in action, go here.