how to use the custom forms included in the cforms plugin

This is an amazing plugin, but it can be a little difficult to jump into and figure out as a new user, especially if you want to use the custom forms and CSS required to put the form in the sidebar. The following will walk you through it:

First, install the plugin.

Extra form code and css

The plugin’s author, Oliver, was very thorough and went so far as to pre-make a sidebar form and the css to display it correctly in the sidebar. You can create as many forms as you want, but Oliver wrote the css for this sidebar form as if it were for your FOURTH created form. So, download the sidebar-example.zip and unzip it to your hard drive. Remember where you put the text file.

In the plugin admin, click “add form” three times so that you’re in the admin to set up the fourth.

Import the form

On the “backup this form” line, click “browse,” locate the sidebar-form.txt file on your hard drive, and click “restore settings.”

Add the css

Open the css file in a text editor, copy it, and paste it into the top of the cforms.css file in the plugin’s folder (in the wp-plugins folder on your server).

Insert the form in your sidebar

How you do this will depend a bit on whether this is a widgetized sidebar or not. I put mine in my extended footer, which is not widgetized. I used the theme editor under “presentation” to edit the sidebar file. Using my blog as an example, I found the div I wanted it in and inserted the code (as well as a title heading) so the whole div code looked like this: <div style="overflow:hidden;">
<?php insert_cform(4); ?>
</div>

Last tweaks

I wound up with the “send” button floating way over to the right, overlapping the next column. So I changed the margins for the input button in the css file to make it line up better. I’m not sure why this happened or if that’s the best fix.

I hope this helps someone:)