Greetings! Today, I would like to provide a tutorial on how to make a two-column layout using Contact Form 7. As a fellow web developer, I have frequently encountered the need to personalize forms to meet certain design needs. With the help of some CSS and Contact Form 7’s adaptable structure, you can effortlessly create a two-column layout that will improve the user experience and elevate the appearance of your form.
Before We Get Started
Before we dive into the details, I assume that you have already installed and activated the Contact Form 7 plugin on your WordPress website. If you haven’t done so, go ahead and install it from the WordPress dashboard. Once activated, you’ll be ready to proceed with the steps outlined below.
Step 1: Create Your Contact Form
The first thing you need to do is create your contact form using Contact Form 7. If you’re new to Contact Form 7, it’s a powerful and popular form plugin for WordPress that allows you to create and manage multiple forms with ease.
Once you have installed and activated the plugin, go to the Contact menu in your WordPress dashboard and click on the “Add New” button. This will take you to the form editor where you can build your custom form.
Step 2: Add CSS Classes to Form Elements
In order to create a two-column layout, we will need to target specific form elements and apply CSS classes to them. Contact Form 7 provides a convenient way to add custom CSS classes to form fields.
Inside the form editor, find the form field that you want to place in the second column. Click on the “Edit” button next to it, and a popup window will appear. In the “Additional Settings” tab, add the following line:
class:two-column
Make sure to click on the “Save” button to apply the changes.
Repeat this step for all the form fields that you want to appear in the second column. For form fields that you want in the first column, you don’t need to add any additional classes.
Step 3: Add CSS Styles
Now that we have added the necessary CSS classes to our form elements, we can proceed with styling them to achieve the desired two-column layout. To do this, we will be adding some custom CSS code to our website.
There are a couple of ways to add CSS styles to your WordPress website. You can either use a custom CSS plugin or add the styles directly to your theme’s stylesheet. For the sake of simplicity, let’s use the built-in customizer in WordPress.
Go to your WordPress dashboard, navigate to “Appearance” and click on “Customize”. This will open the customizer where you can make changes to your website’s appearance. Look for the “Additional CSS” option and click on it.
Inside the “Additional CSS” section, Add the following CSS code:
.two-column {
width: 48%;
display: inline-block;
margin-right: 2%;
}
This CSS code sets the width of the form elements with the “two-column” class to 48%, ensuring that they occupy almost half of the available container width. The “display: inline-block;” property allows the form elements to appear side by side, and the “margin-right: 2%;” property adds a small gap between the two columns.
Step 4: Preview and Test
With the CSS code added, it’s time to preview and test your two-column form. Go back to the form editor in Contact Form 7, and click on the “Preview” button to see how your form looks.
Make sure to test your form by submitting data and checking if everything functions correctly. You may need to adjust the CSS styles or make further modifications to the form structure to fit your specific requirements.
In Conclusion
Creating a two-column layout in Contact Form 7 is a simple and effective way to improve the visual appearance of your forms. By adding custom CSS classes and applying some basic styling, you can achieve a professional and user-friendly design. Remember to test your form thoroughly after making any changes, and tweak the CSS styles as needed to ensure everything works smoothly.