Not a pleasant upgrade

I agree 100000%

I agree. The suggested changes are just annoying and confusing.

There is nothing wrong with using [your-email] if you want to, and the reminder to validate the forms that you cannot get rid of is also annoying

Sample message from a colleague

However need to ask if you can have a look at the contact widget on one of my sites (anyone) they also seem to be not working and it is something to do with a verification? Have you come across this, what do I need to do?

In other words, this update has made someone believe their forms aren’t working, when they are.

This is the fourth instance in the last couple of months where a plugin author has gone all fancy with coding, but has given very little thought to their users. It’s becoming difficult to trust some plugin authors, and I include here both both premium and free, as I have had problems with both. Free plugins are usually a hook for a premium version. But who would buy from plugin authors who treat their user base so poorly.

Quite honestly, a simple contact form is not that difficult. So why make it so damn frustrating to use?

One other problem with CF7 now is that it now doesn’t even work with WP Rollback, so there is no way of reverting to a previous version.

This update has cost me a hell of a lot of my valuable time to find ways to make it work, so I’m logically, far from happy with this whole sad saga.

I support over 50 websites for clients – every site has this stupid “This field has syntax errors.” under the Mail tab.

Every client is demanding their forms aren’t working and demanding they plugin be changed.

I’m pulling my hair out.

How do I get rid of the error? There is NOTHING helpful in the “This contact form has a configuration error. ? How to Resolve Configuration Errors” link.

Why do plugin developers go all stupid and change things that don’t need to change. It worked. Now everyone thinks they have a problem.

10000000% agree with the OP.

+1

@keeperbay

If an email is being sent from your website domain, it should now have a FROM address from that domain. This is because emails are being spoofed by spammers and are being sent from a different domain (e.g. I send you a message from my domain but claim to be sending it from paypal.com). Such messages are being routed into the Spam folder, and so best practice is now to include a FROM email address that is from the website domain. Look at the following setup:

== MAIL ==
To: [email protected]
From: [your-name] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [your-subject]
Additional Headers: Reply-To: [your-email]

What happens and why:

1. The mail is sent from the contact form to the email address specified in the TO field.
2. When you receive the message, it will have the sender’s name and be from the wordpress email address specified in FROM (This doesn’t need to exist, but it does need to be @your-domain.com).
3. By including Re: in the SUBJECT, you will ensure that the field always has some text in it, even if the sender does not complete this field (Best practice is to ensure that there is at least some text in the subject field). Or, you can make the SUBJECT a required field in the *Form* by adding an asterisk: [text* your-subject]
4. Adding the Reply-To: [your-email] in ADDITIONAL HEADERS means that you can reply to the sender by hitting the Reply button in your email client.
5. If you want to actually see the sender’s email address in the message you receive you can include it in the MESSAGE section. For example:

MESSAGE BODY:

From: [your-name] <[your-email]>
Subject: [your-subject]

[your-message]

<————————–>

Forged emails appear to be sent from a legitimate Yahoo email address even though they aren’t, and are used to spread spam and other types of malicious phishing scams. It’s very difficult for the average user to recognize the difference between a legitimate email and a forged one.

To receive responses with an “@yahoo.com” address, either a Reply-To: header or email forwarding from authoritative domains are the suggested options. Bounces should also be managed within your authoritative domains.

Yahoo help

End users and companies all suffer from the high volume of spam and phishing on the Internet. Over the years several methods have been introduced to try and identify when mail from (for example) IRS.GOV really is, or really isn’t coming from the IRS

dmark.org

@barnez,

What does this have to do with Spam?
Contact forms isn’t a baby sitter. If someone isn’t bright enough to recognize spam that is their problem.

I have a client with 75 different forms created with Contact Form 7. Know what I’ve been doing for the last 2 days? Re-creating the forms with a better plugin that actually works.

I have nearly 50 clients who want new email form plugins because Contact Form 7 no longer works.

Also have clients around the world running into issues….Right now, CF7 plugin can completely crash a shared server. My client has been loosing sells for days and once we removed CF7 alone everything was back to normal. Server is back to smooth again. Please come up with a solution quick because many of us developers have faithfully relied, and promoted this product as hassle free. Now we all have clients stirring for answers. As of now I was curios if you could provide a fallback update to patch the confusion and hopefully quickly. Thanks!

@mediashrinx
WOW!! I haven’t run into that issue yet. Thank you for letting me know.
I typically stick with the “Crud Storm Passes” rule when it comes to updates.

Wait until the WordPress Crud Storm Passes and then update, usually be then there is a fix for everything. Wish I had waited for the CF7 Crud Storm to pass, but I never thought they’d intentionally ruin it.

I have changed half of my sites to a different contact form, and they are now working perfectly again. All emails are arriving FROM the sender, and not my own WordPress email as is now the case with CF7.

So, after days of lost time, I can now say I am back to where I started, and back to having at least half of my sites and contact forms working normally again.

Hi @bobsled, technically the emails are From your site, not from the sender! The sender just filled in a form on your website, they are not sending it form their own email programme!

If you had set the From field to [your-name] <[email protected]> and then added Reply-to: [your-name] <[your-email]> to the Additional Headers section, the form would have validated without any errors.

The emails to you would be from your site, but would show the senders Name at the top, if you clicked Reply, it would use the Reply-to address (the senders email, not your website).

An alternative would have been to just ignore the errors, as the forms will still work. Or you could just added this to your wp-config.php file to disable the validation!

/** The Contact Form 7 plugin configuration check. */
define( 'WPCF7_VALIDATE_CONFIGURATION', false );

Regards,
David

Sorry @davinian, but it’s all too much of a hassle. The new contact form I am using operates perfectly out of the box, without the need for all these work arounds with CF7.

I have used CF7 for years and was very happy with it up until the latest upgrade, and never thought about looking elsewhere. But now I have, the new plugin I am using is easier to use and has many more features.

As I said earlier in this thread, annoying users and wasting their time with poorly thought through, and poorly explained plugin upgrades is not good for business.

@bobsled, sorry you feel that way, but at least you have found something that works for you.

@davidian As Sod’s Law would have it, I just received a notification from my host warning me of problems with a few of my sites email addresses. Yes, for the sites I just replaced CF7.

So, I’m taking a bit bite of humble pie, and reloading CF7.

I would rather keep to the devil I know. Warts and all.

And, sorry for all the clichés.