Choose Contact Form 7 Forms Without Shortcodes
ACF Field For CF7 Pro connects Advanced Custom Fields with Contact Form 7 so editors can choose a form from a dropdown instead of copying and pasting shortcode text. Create your forms in Contact Form 7, assign an ACF field to the desired location, select the form, and save the page. The selected form can then appear on the front end.
This approach is useful when different pages need different forms. Editors can manage form selection from the WordPress editor, while a reusable template can handle the output. It reduces the need to edit shortcode strings whenever a landing page, service page, or other content area needs a different Contact Form 7 form.
Pro Features
- Gutenberg block support: use Contact Form 7 forms inside the WordPress block editor.
- Widget and Theme Customizer support: place forms in widget areas and Customizer panels.
- Optional form selection: allow the ACF form field to remain empty when no form is needed.
- Disabled forms: mark one or more Contact Form 7 forms as disabled so they cannot be selected.
The field lists available Contact Form 7 forms in a simple selection interface. This gives content teams a practical way to manage forms without repeatedly locating IDs or checking shortcode characters.
Practical Ways to Use It
Page-specific forms
Landing pages can each use their own lead-capture form, selected directly for that page. Service pages can share one template while displaying different inquiry forms according to the editor’s selection.
Shared and multilingual content
Use an ACF option page to select a site-wide Contact Form 7 form for areas such as headers, footers, or sidebars. On multilingual sites, editors can choose different forms for different language versions through the editor.
Developer-controlled output
After the field is registered, a template can output the selected value with the standard ACF function get_field(). The plugin can also return the WPCF7_ContactForm object through the acf_cf7_object filter when more control over output is required.
Requirements and Setup
Advanced Custom Fields and Contact Form 7 must both be active. Advanced Custom Fields powers the field, while Contact Form 7 provides the forms that can be selected. A one-time setup requires creating an ACF field with the type contact_form_7 and adding the field output to the relevant theme template.
- Create a form in Contact Form 7.
- Create an Advanced Custom Field using the contact_form_7 field type.
- Assign the field to the page, post, option page, widget, or supported Customizer location where it will be used.
- Select a Contact Form 7 form from the dropdown and save the content.
- Use the ACF value in the template where the form should appear.
The supplied compatibility information lists ACF 5, ACF 6, Contact Form 7 5.9 and above, WordPress 6.0 and above, and PHP 8.1 and above.
