7 Best WordPress Contact Form Plugins

Mar 13, 2015
Most of the WordPress blogs and websites make use of built-in forms. Plugins are an amazing way to extend and add functionality to WordPress websites. It can be a great idea to tweak them and create custom forms by using WordPress plugins. A good contact form will give your business website a professional appearance and makes it easier for you to manage the online communication. Moreover, the readers and customers can get in touch with the website owners through the contact form.Rather than having a simple contact form, you can make use of fantastic free and premium contact form plugins available. Simple feedback forms to multiple field feedback forms can be created using different types of plugins. We have hand-picked some of the best contact form plugins for WordPress. Every plugin has its pros and cons and before using one, it is important to find out whether it is suitable for your website or not.Benefits of Using Plugins for Contact FormCustomization: It becomes easier to create contact forms that match with your existing look of the website. Custom fields can be added to the form to suit the clients’ specific requirements.Contact management: A few contact form plugins for WordPress include dashboard so that the users can manage the contact information from the customers.Ease of use: Almost all WordPress contact form plugins are simple and easy to use. User-friendly interfaces of the plugins do not need any coding to install or use.Spam Protection: Some contact form plugins include security measures to prevent spam comments.7 Most Popular Contact Form Plugins for WordPress#1. Fast Secure Contact Form
Fast Secure Contact Form WordPress Plugin Banner
Fast Secure Contact form plugin is versatile and easy to use. It allows you to add, remove and reorder the fields. Multiple forms can be created and the users can be redirected to any URL after the message is sent. It offers automatic spam comment protection along with built-in Akismet and CAPTCHA support.Fast Secure Contact form is available for free from WordPress plugin directory. A companion plugin to add CAPTCHA support can also be installed.For more details: http://www.fastsecurecontactform.com#2. Jetpack Contact Form
Jetpack contact form wordpress plugin banner
This all-powerful Jetpack plugin for WordPress consists of several useful features. As it is built on Akismet, it offers greater spam protection. This plugin is reliable and easy to use and also adds a new Auto Reply sub-menu item.For more details: http://jetpack.me#3. Slick Contact Forms
Slick contact forms wordpress plugin banner
Being a widget-based plugin, Slick Contact form is user-friendly way to build contact forms that stand out. Floating forms, sticky sliding tab forms, drop-down buttons can also be designed for the pages. The plugin can also handle multiple forms per page. This is an added advantage of Slick Contact form.When we talk about personalization, Slick Contact forms allow three text input fields and one text area. It also offers several configuration options. The users can set the sent address as the default WordPress admin address or select a different email for contact notification. It consists of various additional features that include contact form widget options custom redirects after submission and shortcodes.For more details: https://wordpress.org/plugins/slick-contact-forms/#4. Contact Form 7
Contact form 7 Wordpress plugin banner
Contact Form 7 offers a basic and flexible contact form for WordPress websites. Studies show that the plugin has been downloaded more than 16 million times by WordPress web users. Besides allowing users to customize the form fields and mail contents, it allows users to create multiple forms and insert them on any page or post. One of the major benefits of Contact Form 7 is that it is available in multiple languages.For more details: http://contactform7.com/#5. Ninja Forms
Ninja Forms Wordpress plugin banner
This is another popular plugin that is used for creating contact forms. Drag and drop features allows you to create contact forms and email address collection in a few minutes. There are various premium Ninja forms extensions available. Some of the important premium features include file uploads, frontend editing and posting, PayPal integration and email marketing support. Ninja Forms have been downloaded more than 760,543 times and has a 4.4 star average rating.For more details: https://ninjaforms.com/#6. Formidable Pro
Formbidable pro wordpress plugin banner
Formidable Pro Basic version is available for free. The cost of Single Site License is $ 47 and the Unlimited License costs $ 117. It comes with standard and unlimited plans. It is possible to integrate Formidable Pro with Basecamp, MailChimp and Trillio. It allows the users to create posts, pages and custom posts types with the forms. Managing and editing the posts becomes easier from the front-end of the website.For more details: https://formidablepro.com/#7. Custom Contact Forms
Custom Contact Forms WordPress plugin banner
Custom Contact Forms is an intuitive and highly customizable plugin and it is packed with extremely user-friendly features. It allows the users to customize the colors, borders, size and backgrounds for the contact forms. The fields can be added, removed or rearranged too.For more details: https://wordpress.org/plugins/custom-contact-forms/In a nutshell….WordPress plugins can not only make the inquiry process seamless, but simultaneously help improve the user experience, resulting in better lead generation and improved ROI. If you are looking for a WordPress Plugin development for Contact form to improve your business, Get in touch with us at http://www.hiddenbrains.com/inquiry.html...

Why we recommend CodeIgniter (Experience it Now!)

Jun 23, 2014
What is CodeIgniter? CodeIgniter is open source toolkit used for developing dynamic websites with PHP. It provides rich set of libraries that enable to perform development in a much faster way compared to the manual coding from scratch. You can also change the behavior of existing libraries with less effort and your whole framework would work accordingly. With CodeIgniter you can focus on the development of the project, reducing time in writing the codes.MVC architecture All coding frameworks have configured the MVC architecture and if in case it is not, then you can configure it easily. The absence of MVC may lead to unmanageable codes, especially when large coding is required. With MVC, you can keep the code separate and manageable - no matter how long the code you generate it. Many of the framework compels to follow rules using MVC but with CodeIgniter offers you a system to use MVC that makes sense for you preventing from unnecessary implementation.Security CodeIgniter permits to implement the necessary security as you require it for your app. The default features allow to set all global variables without depending on the PHPs register global directive. Cookie encryption, automatically escaping SQL queries and handling session data with a database can be enabled in CI.Database Abstraction Layer Mostly, all frameworks have a layer of the database abstraction and so do CodeIgniter. With this you can delete, update, create and insert without feeding the codes in SQL. Connect to multiple databases within one application MySQL, MS SQL, MySQLi, Oracle, Postgre, SQLite or ODBC.Libraries and Helpers CodeIgniter works with both PHP4 and 5 making it easy to work between the two environments. The defaults functions includes forms, file handling, arrays, strings, cookies and directories with which you can do coding at ease. Moreover, you get all tools in one framework at the libraries and helpers available in CodeIgniter. You can modify these or make your own library or helper with CodeIgniter.Inbuilt Libraries in CodeIgniter-
  • ► Benchmarking Class
  • ► HTML Table Class
  • ► File Uploading Class
  • ► Email Class
  • ► Cart Class
  • ► Image Manipulation Class
  • ► FTP Class
  • ► Calendar Class
  • ► Encryption Class
  • ► Output Class
  • ► Loader Class
  • ► XML-RPC Class
  • ► User Agent Class
  • ► Typography Class
  • ► Template Parser Class
  • ► Zip Encoding Class
  • ► URI Class
  • ► Pagination Class
  • ► Language Class
  • ► Session Class
  • ► Input and Security Class
  • ► Config Class
Inbuilt Helpers in CodeIgniter–
  • ► Inflector Helper
  • ► Smiley Helper
  • ► Security Helper
  • ► Language Helper
  • ► String Helper
  • ► Text Helper
  • ► Number Helper
  • ► URL Helper
  • ► XML Helper
  • ► Typography Helper
  • ► Path Helper
EllisLabs CMS, is in rebuilding mode to use the framework. The purpose behind this is whatever libraries, helpers that you develop for CodeIgniter you can use it in the future with the help of this Expression Engine.Using frameworks it would surely increase your efficiency with the help of inbuilt functionalities. It has high security features and community, supporting documentation, community forums and stack overflow....

CodeIgniter : The Ideal Framework for Websites

May 16, 2013
PHP as an ideal programming language provides various frameworks that allow developers to develop the most innovative websites and applications. Each PHP framework has been designed to provide some special features like ease of use, quick development, feature rich applications, eCommerce friendly environment etc.Many of these frameworks are open source platforms allowing free web development. However, CodeIgniter is the best among all of them. This framework has all the components that support fast, cost-effective and hassle-free web development. In this article, we have mentioned some features of this PHP framework that makes it the most preferred option.CodeIgniter is equipped with numerous in built libraries with pre written codes. Its simple and easy to use interface allows developers to access these libraries and use the pre written code for quick development.If an open source developer creates an application from scratch instead of going with the resource panel, it would take around 10 times more effort to complete the development process as many operational difficulties and lags during the development.However with CodeIgniter, it is always easy to get source codes and use them most comprehensively for developing various modules.With the help of CodeIgniter, one can develop fully functional websites with absolutely simple structure. It also allows managing the web applications without any trouble and a steadfast performance is assured too. Thorough, clear and convenient documentation system of this framework makes the development process absolutely transparent.CodeIgniter offers quality web development solutions that provides effective service to the users. It is beneficial not just for the users but for the developers as well. One can develop lots of flexible and secure applications with the help of CodeIgniter customization.This tool is search engine friendly, so an outstanding online presence is assured. Furthermore, this amazing framework can be upgraded by just adding different plug-ins and extensions form exclusive helper or class extension libraries.It is the most preferred framework by huge businesses for PHP application development. The reason being the efficiency of this light weight platform to create applications which could deal with huge amounts of data. Also the applications and websites based on this platform are considered to be highly secure and absolutely reliable.With all these incredible features, this superior framework today stands among the most preferable and reliable open source platforms for developing PHP based web applications....

How to Choose The Best Company for Outsourcing Your PHP Base

May 06, 2013
PHP web programming is the best option to develop rapid and functional web applications and services. Numerous small and large scale IT companies are offering PHP web development services.There are many qualities that should be present in an ideal PHP development company; however finding out all of them in one company is not an easy job. So let us see some of the qualities that make a company an ideal choice for PHP projects outsourcing.

Portfolio

The portfolio of work of a company shows the way it works. So you must check the portfolio of the companies before choosing one. See the types of projects done by them in the past.It will show their domain expertise and their abilities. Make sure that they have done projects on the technologies that suit your project requirements. It will be nice if you could find projects similar to your project.

Website

While searching for a company to outsource your PHP based projects, first of all check out the website of the company. Check out the functionality, navigation, graphics, contents and SEO of the site.If they own a good, professional and unique website of their own, then they could be efficient enough to work for you. If they do not care about their own website, how can they deliver the best services to you?

Development Methodology

Generally all the companies work on a project development cycle for developing websites and applications for their clients. Ask them about different project development methodologies they follow and compare them with the other methodologies popularly followed. The documentation is an unavoidable part of the development cycle so it is very important to know which documents are required and where you can help them.

Get Details About The Company

There are many questions related to your project requirements that you must ask the company. Check out for how long has the company existed, how many members are there in the development team, are they efficient enough to complete your project effectively. Check all their certifications and get reviews about the company from its past clients.

Technical support

Just getting your project completed is not all. What if you face a problem after getting the website or app complete? So make sure you choose a company that offers round the year technical support and maintenance services as well. Hence whenever there is a complex technical issue, quick services will be available with you to restore your website.Once you are content that the PHP development company is perfect as per all the above parameters, you do not need to go anywhere else. You can outsource all your PHP based projects to it....

Why to Choose PHP Shopping Cart?

Apr 22, 2013
An online shopping cart is the best sales tool to grab your customers with your website and sell your products and services. When it comes to selling online, there are numerous shopping cart solutions available in the market.However, PHP shopping cart solutions are considered as the best of them. It allows the users to perform many functional tasks like adding to the cart, updating the cart and deleting unwanted items from the cart.It is very easy to create a PHP shopping cart. If you are well versed in PHP, you can easily make it on your own. Otherwise, you can hire a PHP developer for your project requirement. There is a huge community of PHP developers across the world. You can choose anyone of these proficient and skilled developers.A PHP shopping cart has many attributes that contribute towards the success of your business. These attributes include the ability to send the requisite information to the cart, to locate and execute a high conformity cart and to call an external PHP file. You can also add the feature to pay via PayPal, to your website.Most PHP shopping cart software comes with ready-to-run PHP shopping carts that do not require any programming knowledge. The software is usually cost efficient and is equipped with numerous e-commerce features.PHP shopping carts are also search engine friendly, and they allow you to accept online credit card processing. Many of these software also allow for real-time shipping quotes and easy order notifications via email or SMS.PHP shopping carts are flexible, fully functional and can be easily integrated into any online shopping website. Those who are planning to add a shopping cart to their website must choose a PHP shopping cart with custom template systems. It will make the cart compatible with multiple payment gateways.While purchasing a PHP shopping cart make sure that you get it from a company that offers free technical support. The software should also have many currency supports, and it must offer multiple shipping configurations.There are numerous online shopping carts with PHP shopping cart software that have prominent benefits. So you can choose one and install it on your website. It can be difficult for a non technical person to install the shopping cart on a website, but you can get it installed from a technical person.Furthermore, some of the companies selling the carts may make it so easy for you to install the software. So, what are you waiting for? Get the benefit of a PHP shopping cart and take your online business to a new height....

Top Five PHP Vulnerabilities – A Programmer Should Kno

Apr 03, 2013
For the development of the dynamic websites, PHP is the most preferred language. This server side scripting language, loaded with numerous features and functionalities is quite easy to understand and apply. However, there are certain features that enable a programmer to unknowingly allow security holes to creep into a web application.In spite of these vulnerabilities, this general purpose programming language can be as secure as other languages, once the basic types of flaws in PHP web applications is well understood. In this article, we have listed some of the worst blunders for you to consider and how it influences the security practices of PHP developers.

Source Code Revelation

It is well known that PHP is a server side framework, so you don’t have any access to view source if you want to see a script’s code. But, in the event of breakdown of Apache’s configuration, people can easily view the name and content of the files.Thus, when anything goes wrong with Apache, then all the scripts are served on the plain text, and people have access to it, which they aren't suppose to have. Some of these accessible files may have sensitive information like database credentials. So, it is essential to lock such files away from the publicly accessible directory to avoid the consequences of such vulnerability.

Directory Traversal

Like the previous one, this attack looks for sites that have no security, where it should be. Finding such web sties, it works on the files to be accessed that the developer did not thought to make it publicly available. It's also known as the climbing attack or the backtracking attack.There are a few ways to avoid this blunder. The first thing you can do is to shortlist the pages, which you want to be returned for such a given request using white-listing. The second option is to transfer the file paths to absolute paths and making sure that they are referencing files in allowed directories.

Session ID Protection

With most of the PHP websites, Session ID hijacking causes a serious problem. For each of the user's session, the PHP session tracking component has a unique ID. But, in case, this ID is known to another person, then he/she can easily hijack the user's session and can easily drive the information which should be confidential.This type of vulnerability can not be prevented completely, so you should know the risks and ways to mend it. One way to stop this is by storing your session ID in a spot, which is only accessibly by scripts, either on disk or in a database.

SQL Injection

Compared to others, this is the number one on the hit list. In this type of blunder, anyone can enter an SQL fragment as a value in your URL or web form. Then, the person can easily know your table names and access your secret files.How to avoid this type of danger? The best way is to use PDO Prepared Statements. These statements segregate the data from the instructions. This helps to prevent the data from being treated as anything other than data.These are just the five issues that you need to be careful during PHP development. Because, if you are not alert and careful, these blunders can allow your PHP application to be transgressed....

Most Popular PHP Content Management Systems

Mar 30, 2013
A Content Management System is an application is used to manage and organize the contents of a website. It allow the webmasters to build professional websites in quick and efficient manner.Most of the Content Management Systems are quite identical to each other. Basically, they boast features like themes and plugins. Still, all these CMS softwares are somewhat different from each other. Here, we will see some of the best CMSs used with the PHP platform.

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system that accounts for 62 million websites, or 17.4 percent of the total websites on the internet. It is the biggest CMS on the internet and has the largest community of web developers. Even though it’s chiefly used as a blogging platform the custom fields, custom posts types and custom taxonomies features allow it to be used as a CMS.The software also includes many free plugins and themes. The users can also make their own plugins or they may just modify the templates. The administrative interface of Wordpress is very easy to use.

Drupal

With its first version released in 2001, Drupal counts among the oldest and most popular CMS softwares. Even though Drupal is very popular, it is quite difficult to learn. However, you don’t need to know the coding as there are a lot of plugins to do almost everything.The release of Drupal 7 has made it easier to use and more functional in response to the increasing dependence on WordPress. While WordPress is usually considered to be better than Drupal, this CMS offers better security and allows to build frameworks for large projects. Moreover, it can be installed on most versions of PHP and MySQL.

Joomla

While WordPress is very easy to use and Drupal is designed for professional web developers, Joomla tries to offer the best of both to amateurs and professionals likewise. It has a captivating administration interface, complete with intuitive drop-down menu and other features.It also supports access control protocols like LDAP, OpenID and Gmail.com. Like Drupal you do not need to know coding to use Joomla, but you can make your own plugins if you know coding. Many plugins are available with Joomla as well, however many of them are paid. Just like WordPress, Joomla also has a huge tech community behind it.A CMS must be built for the users who are going to edit the content of the web page. It means that the developer does not need to spend lots of time on helping the client edit the site. All of these CMSs are basically popular due to their flexibility.With a little training even a non technical person can create blogs, site news, an online book, FAQ, RSS Feeds and many more such contents. All the three CMSs mentioned here are good CMS platforms. It depends on you which one you choose as per your requirements and ideas....

Top 5 PHP Based Framework for Innovative Websites

Mar 20, 2013
PHP web development is one of the most popular and preferred web development services. PHP is very easy to use, saves time and it is free to use. PHP itself has total 18 different frameworks with different features. So which one is the best among all of them. Let us see some of them in brief.

Yii:

Presently, Yii is the best PHP framework in the market. It is faster than Codeigniter and Zend framework and includes some features of Symfony like filter design and plug-in architecture. Its other amazing features include simple error handling and logging.It also supports cross platform web development. So you can easily use the code from PEAR or Zend framework. With yii you do not need to worry about input validation, sql injection and other routine security tasks, as these are done on their own.

CodeIgniter:

It is a light and easy to learn framework. It includes a rich set of libraries that allows faster development. Moreover, it has a simple interface and logical structure which allow accessing these libraries. In this, the amount of code required is very less as compared to others. It is widely used by freelancers, small teams as well as huge companies.

Zend:

Zend is the most preferred PHP frameworks for businesses around the globe. It includes various tools to simplify the development process. It also offers a very properly integrated development environment that lets you take full advantage of all its services. This framework is secure, fast, scalable and reliable. It allows developing Web 2.0 applications and web services.

CakePHP:

CakePHP is easy to learn and it provides a basic organizational structure. This keeps the whole application concordant and logical. It can manage every aspect, from the user’s initial request to the ultimate rendering of the web page. Being an MVC based framework, it allows the user to easily customize and extend most aspects of the web application.

Symfony:

Symfony comes with highly convenient debugging toolbar which helps it make better applications. This framework is very light and it requires onlt two writing folders, which can be easily configured to the established level of security, that the user requires for the app. Symonfy also works well with http accelerators like Varnish.For beginners, it has separate web application business rules, server logic, and presentation views. It has numerous tools and classes that help minimizing the development time of a web application. It has been exhaustively tested in several real-world projects. It is works with most of the databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server. It runs on Unix and Windows operating systems.So these were some of the most popular PHP frameworks. Many other PHP frameworks are also available in the market. Finally, the choice is yours. You can choose anyone of them which best suits your project requirements....

Systematic Handling of Website Contents with Appropriate CMS

Jul 04, 2009
A systematic manner of doing things is the best key to remove complexity from various processes and to enhance the productivity! In web development arena content management system plays essential role for good performance, actually CMS (content management system) is a computer application, which is responsible for systematic creation, edition, publication and manipulation of content on the website. Many types of Content management systems exists at different levels such enterprise, web and component are very common.Website development may consist of many web pages including several other people like to write pages on same website and RSS feed & searchable features may required by the website owner. To manage several activities related to website and content, website owners usually use content management systems; moreover it is necessary to reduce complexity of the work.Using CMS is wonderful way of managing various administrative and common activities as it is used by several people such administrators as well as certain people according to requirement. Selection of appropriate CMS is essential, for the websites which are developed in PHP open source CMSs are best and for the .NET based websites DotNetNuke is best according to expert CMS developers.There are several organizations which spend millions for the development of customize content management systems to manage their tasks and to make the work simpler and internet is the place where both types are available such as paid & free.From the series of open source content management systems, there are many which are very popular for their simplicity and free availability on the internet. Mambo, WordPress, Drupal are few open source CMSs, which are freely accessible and very useful for customize management & control.Active communities, forums of each one are very helpful in complex situations. Professional assistance for installation of these content management systems is necessary for novice users. Among all of them WordPress has received warm appreciation as it does not required any coding and very easy to understand and mange by novice people also.For managing content of complicated and huge websites, content management system is the best tool available and a quality & good CMS only can work efficiently to handle more complex situations regarding management & control of websites.After installation of appropriate CMS and for the optimum utilization, users must have clear understanding about whole software such as its complete working & application as it is necessary for error-free price changes, listings, offers, news and several other tasks of the website handling.Using appropriate CMS is the best way for managing the content of websites in productive manner....

Mambo Productiveness in Web World

Multiple usages of content management systems (CMS) from Open Source products are the current trend of reducing complexity and providing solution to various corporate issues related to web applications and website development. Open source content management systems are widely accepted in the world of online business by professionals and nowise users of internet regarding respective interests.

Mambo is well-known for its unmatched properties in the field of web development. Mambo is licensed under (GNU) General Public License and allows high flexibility for the development of customize websites as it allows developers to use its syntax with full freedom for modifications. For the development of dynamic websites, programmers must be expert in PHP programming language as well as Mambo architecture.

Moreover, Mambo implementation does not require knowledge of HTML, XML, and DHTML, simply one have to enter content and after picture addition, click publish through administrator. For the rapid development of websites, Mambo CMS is boon for non professionals and expert developers.

Many technologies are gaining fame in its respective field due to its useful features for the users, Mambo customization is the feature rich open source product and there are some advance features which distinguishes it among other technologies such as RSS feeds, page catching, polls, blogs, addition is possible for more down loads, web indexing for static pages, language packs and website searching.

Although Mambo is easy to use and well-known, as well as thousands of users are using for their respective needs, but optimum utilization comes by doing regular practice and with professional approach towards using. For the quality results professional knowledge about any CMS architecture and related programming language is very essential, for error-free installation, integration of modules, new design integration and modification in existing website.

For the optimum utilization of any open source content management, professionals are required to get updated with latest versions, for instance since Mambo’s inception many new versions have been introduced, the latest version released by Mambo team is Mambo 4.5.6 and its code name is “Jupiter”. According to releasers, this release is for providing more serious security to applications patching up the earlier versions.

Hiring any professional custom application development company is much better option to get free from all hassles as they use to provide customized services in application development using Mambo open source content management. Experienced developers performs development work professionally because they use to do regular research on online developments of web world, planned approach of performing projects is the key of productive results for their clients.

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