I’ve been doing some consulting recently for a local start-up that has used school computers for sale. When I put their website together, I did what I’ve done for numerous other clients: I used Contact Form 7 to put some email forms on the site. I put a shortcode in a sidebar widget for an email form. But for some reason, although the main contact form worked with no problem, emails submitted through the sidebar form failed, every time.
After some research and discussion with the hosting provider, I reached the conclusion that there was some issue with the sidebar that was breaking the shortcode’s functionality. Bottom line: I would need to either insert the code manually into the template (I try to avoid that), buy a premium plugin (not really an option in this case) or use some other hack such as Foxy Form.
However, I discovered a simple workaround via Jetpack, the free service from Automattic that connects self-hosted WordPress sites with wordpress.com. Very handy way of getting an email form into a site without running around looking for a new plugin.