Ove the weekend I was asked to update an old client website. When I first built their website, I provided them with a static page with a contact form. This served their needs for a long time. The original website can be seen below. It’s a single static page with a simple contact form. I built this using a free bootstrap template as a base. There is a basic php script in the background that sends the contact form inputs back to an email address.
The new client website
The client asked me for a new website and they wanted new features. This included the ability to easily update the website with changes, a client list without logos, and the ability to have a blog in future. This seemed like an opportunity to put together a word press page, which would also mean that the time it would take me would be reduced. So thats what I did. I created a single page website see image below.
I used the free hestia theme, however an issue with this is the wp-forms plugins doesn’t save form entries. This is a serious and painful issue which I will have to extend the extension. The asking price for wp-forms pro or whatever is $40/year which is a huge waste of money as this does not generate revenue. I will have to build that feature in myself and that will be anther blog post. This further gets on my nerves because this should be a very basic core feature.
On the other hand the hestia theme is fully customisable for free. There are some features missing here and there but is fully deployable on a client site. I fully recommend this theme and if I ever did paid wordpress work I would consider buying themes from this company.
Check out the website here
To understand how HTTPS was enabled on the site for free check out one of my first posts here.
Update: 2020/08/12:
I figured out how to replace wp-forms with ninja forms. Ninja forms allows you to see all form entries on the wordpress dashboard. To do this all you have to do is:
- Go to Customise Hestia
- Click on Frontpage Sections
- Select Contact
- Select Contact Content
- Then replace the wp-forms shortcode with the ninja forms shortcode
