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The Blogger "Contact" Form - What You See Is What You Get

Blog owners add the Blogger supplied Contact Form, then wonder about the details, and what options are available.

The Blogger supplied "Contact Form" gadget provides a very basic form, with few options. There's not a lot to do or see.

With the Blogger "Contact Form" gadget, what you see is what you get.

You add the form to the blog, and you change the Title of the form.

Use is simple. You fill out the form, and Send. The content, once sent, can't be edited.

The reply address is whatever you entered, in the "Email" box.

If you are the owner of the blog, the message goes to you. If the blog has multiple administrators, Send a test message, and have everybody check their Inboxes. Find out who should expect to see Contact messages, and what email addresses are targeted.

If you test the form on your blog, when using a Blogger account based on a non GMail email address, you may not receive the test entry in your Inbox.

If you, as the blog owner, want a form with more options, or the ability to manage form recipients, you use a third party form. You can use Google Docs, and create a simple "Contact Me" form, in 15 minutes. A Google Docs created form can have multiple, designated recipients, and can be edited by the sender. The Docs based form entry goes into an online database, which can be accessible by designated recipients.

You can embed a Google Docs based form in a page or post - and you can create your page or post as a separate tab, in the blog - as I added my Blogger "Contact Me" form or alternately, my Expanded Followers gadget, to this blog.

What you see below is my demonstration Google Docs form, embedded using an IFrame. The IFrame code is provided with the form, which required a brief 10 minutes to create. When you create your form, hit "Send form", then "Embed", to get the code for your form. You can see my improved Contact form, in my page, "Contact Me, Improved".
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1JvoY2yf5aTChnvXlCgGsUerSCtI7RHpRdkq5SPBPm90/viewform?embedded=true" width="700" height="800" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0">Loading...</iframe>



There are various third party, non Google "Contact" form suppliers - some free, others not - some reliable and safe, others not. Be careful, if you decide to use a non Google, third party, product.

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Comments

Chuck, great post. so many options. I need clarification about email behind the photo. (how to.) good stuff, as usual. Angelina
I've tried a few others that were free and didn't find them easy to use. Made my day when the contact form was easily added to a page! Scotty
VP said…
I've often wondered how to do this outside of the Gadget option. This is really helpful, thanks :)
Anonymous said…
Has anyone noticed that the "Contact" form is not working, and has not been working for the last few days? You can fill in and send, but as the recipient of the contact, you will not receive the messages sent.
Nitecruzr said…
The Blogger supplied "Contact Me" form works for some people - maybe not for everybody.
Unknown said…
Great blog! Very informative and intelligent! Keep up the good work!
Admin B said…
How about you register another contributor (The one one with the email you will want to use), the make them an Admin, then remove your original blogger account. I'm sure the settings will have no option but to deliver the emails to the new blogger account supplied.
Nitecruzr said…
Hi Michael,

Thanks for your thought - and welcome to Nitecruzr Dot Net.

Unfortunately, my experience is that the "Contact Me" and Permissions databases are separate - and removal of an account name / email address, from Permissions, only affects dashboard access.

BlogSend, "Contact Me", and Comment Moderation / Notification are three different Blogger features that send to email - and all three appear to be separate from Permissions.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2013/02/control-email-settings-relevant-to-your.html

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