In a previous post, I discussed the creation of contact form for the contact page. It was a basic form; when a user submitted the form, they got a completion/feedback message with an appropriate illustration. The feedback message and illustration are still on the contact page; they replace the form after the user hits the Submit button.
A few days later I wanted to make some edits to the contact page and form, most notably adding a drop-down box to the form so users can zero in on the type of message they’re sending (feedback, question, tech. issue, etc.), and adding an illustration to the default contact page. Oh, I also moved some general verbiage that was associated to the “Comment or Message” field of the form to the top of the page under the headline. (The text was “Got a question or feedback? Let us know!”)
Updating the form with the dropdown box was easy enough; using a feedback message with an illustration already on the default contact page perhaps was not the best idea after all — or at least I wanted to take control of the situation without extra coding.
This is what the user would see on the updated default contact page before and after hitting the submit button (I think the header is cropped out of the “after” shot):
Errrr … I would have preferred the initial illustration (upper left) to go away with the “Got a comment . . . text.”
Having both images on the same page after form submission wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but having that default text linger was definitely not ideal.
To solve this, I *could* create a page just for the confirmation message and illustration and have WP Forms bring up the new page instead of just replacing the form with the message and illustration.
I easily created the confirmation page and populated it with the desired elements.
Alas, to proceed with this functionality through WP Forms, I’d have to upgrade from the free Lite version to a basic paid version. Fifty bucks for the first year, 99 bucks per year thereafter. Benefits of upgrading only good on this one site.
Uggabugga. I went for it. Fifty bucks gone, but now users get a fresh “message received” page when they submit the contact form.
Worth $50 bucks? Hard to say. But “Time is money, friend!”
If I remember, I’ll re-style the “Thanks for contacting . . .” type to match the earlier screenshot.