The RSVPMaker Contact Form

Toastmost and WordPress for Toastmasters websites include the RSVPMaker plugin for event promotion, agendas, and guest registration. If you are using the guest registration function, you may find it convenient to track general inquiries through the same system.

The RSVPMaker contact form is new. I added this function after hearing from Toastmost users that another contact form plugin was generating emails but didn’t save them to a database — likely a function reserved for users of a premium upgrade.

Insert the new Contact Form (RSVPMaker) content block to any page where you want to invite comments from the public. Using a content form allows you to avoid publishing your email address on the website (which can attract spam) while also prompting the person writing to you to provide their name and contact information.

A preview of the contact form will be displayed in the editor. The block properties sidebar allows you to switch between forms. It also links to where you can edit the form or create additional forms.

The default contact form should work for most purposes. You could customize it to, for example, remove the phone number fields or add a field or two — keeping in mind that people are more likely to use a form if you keep it short and simple.

Contact form submissions will be sent by email to the same list of addresses as RSVP guest registrations.

Contact form submissions are also saved to the same database as RSVP entries and can be viewed from the RSVP Report screen. This screen also now shows an option to view all contacts — a consolidated list of contacts from your contact form and RSVPs — or download that consolidated list.

Preventing Form Spam

While using a contact form allows you to avoid publishing your email address, web forms attract their own variety of spam. Automated bots prowl the internet and enter inappropriate content into anything that looks like a form.

RSVPMaker incorporates some basic form spam prevention techniques, but for more sophisticated protection you can activate an integration with Google ReCaptcha (the I’m not a robot test). See the Settings screen for RSVPMaker.

Once activated, the ReCaptcha prompt will appear on both your event RSVP forms and on your contact forms. Submissions that fail the test will be rejected.

Because this requires a little extra setup, you may want to wait and see whether form spam is enough of an issue to make it necessary.