4.8 and the future of Contact Form 7

  • Hey @takayukister,

    I think everyone would really appreciate it if you addressed some of the ongoing concerns with the most recent update of Contact Form 7. This update massively changed the way that your plugin functions, and came without warning to any plugin developers or site owners to allow them to update their code accordingly. Add to that, it seems like you’re not responding to any support requests in this forum related to this update. As such, this has caused a massive headache for many people over the last week.

    A lot of us are left scratching our heads as to why this change was necessary, why it was enacted without warning, and what it means for the future of this plugin.

    It seems like the last couple of updates have been made with some big plans in mind. Could you let us in on what some of those plans are, and what you might anticipate for future updates that could potentially affect the usability of this plugin in the way that 4.8 has?

    Contact Form 7 is one of the most popular plugins in the WordPress repository. And rightfully so, it’s a great plugin! To make such a massive change as this without any prior warning is just quite concerning.

    I think it would be really beneficial for everyone to just hear your thoughts about all of this.

    Thanks!

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)

  • I agree. Takayuki Miyoshi has been very generous with this. I very much appreciate what has been done here–for free. I am assuming the best. Over all these years this plug in has been very reliable. This was a miss. You cannot hit them all. So, I would just like a heads up on what to expect and a more clear explanation of what is changed so compensations can be developped.

    Plugin Author Takayuki Miyoshi

    (@takayukister)

    • I always post on contactform7.com when there are big changes or important announcement. I know few people read it, though.
    • I’ll release Contact Form 7 4.8.1 if there are critical bugs or security issues found in Contact Form 7 4.8. So far nothing has been found.
    • I know a few plugins and themes using Contact Form 7’s functions had problems with Contact Form 7 4.8. In most cases, the problem turned out that they were using the functions in their own incorrect way. They were working with the previous versions? It was just a lucky coincidence!
    • I hope add-on authors consult documentation on contactform7.com and use functions in a correct way, but I can’t force them.
    • I never recommend you stay with Contact Form 7 4.7 or older, but after all, it’s your choice.
    • I respond to questions if resolving the issue is surely important for the user and I think I can help them. Otherwise, I don’t.

    All that is fair. I did consult contactform7.com and found that on_sent_ok is in the process of depreciation and that is on the front page. I have noticed problems with plugins. In particular “jquery validation for contact form 7” was causing problems with the spinning wheel. I see that “Conditional Fields” just updated. I am sure that there are other problems and they will take time for the developers, who have been kind enough to share their work usually with very little compensation for their time, to update to be consistent with CF7 4.8. I very much appreciate developers who try to plug up security issues and I agree that it is not a good and safe plan to stay rolled back to 4.7. However, until all have updated to be consistent to 4.8, there is little choice for now (a temporary solution). I also agree that failure to maintain standards consistent with your plug-in is not your issue. I will review my own use of your functions and see where I have made errors if any. I thought I was using them according to the standard. I could be wrong and have been experiencing the lucky coincidence.

    The major issue is with those that disable the REST API. That is basically anyone who cares about closing loopholes to hackers. There are very good reasons in terms of security to disable it via htaccess or if your security plugin does it as an option. Tens of blog posts by all the security companies make is pretty clear. It is a hackers dream to find the REST API open to them – they can really give your site a work over using it. I think if you don’t move away from using the REST API and in this way, your plugin will fade away which is a real shame. Many people don’t realize but they probably get more robot hacker traffic than they do real visitors – install something like Ninja firewall which is free and then watch the logs of how many blocks the firewall has to make. It is a real eye opener.

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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