Troubleshooting
If you are facing a technical issue with the Divi Contact Form Helper, please check the troubleshooting steps listed below. If the outcome of following the steps below points to an issue with our plugin specifically, please send us a support message. When you reach out for support, we will ask about the results of these troubleshooting steps to better understand and resolve the issue.
👉 General Troubleshooting Steps
Step 1: Deactivate All Plugins Except Divi Contact Form Helper
When troubleshooting an issue with our plugin, it’s essential to determine whether there is a conflict with another plugin. To do this, please deactivate all other plugins on your site, leaving only the Divi Contact Form Helper active. If deactivating the other plugins resolves the issue, it indicates a conflict with one of them.
To identify which plugin is causing the conflict, start by reactivating each plugin one at a time. After reactivating each plugin, refresh the page to check if the issue still happens. Continue this process until you find the plugin that triggers the problem.
Once you’ve identified the conflicting plugin, please let us know the details so we can provide further assistance.
If the issue is still happening with only our plugin active, it suggests the problem may not be related to a conflict and will require further investigation.
Step 2: Deactivate Our Divi Contact Form Helper Plugin
Please temporarily deactivate the Divi Contact Form Helper to confirm whether our plugin is causing the issue. While this may seem counterintuitive, it is an important step to verify if the problem is related to our plugin.
If the issue persists after deactivating our plugin, it suggests that our plugin is not the cause. Conversely, if the problem only occurs when our plugin is active, it indicates that our plugin might be involved and will require further investigation.
🔧 Common Issues
Below is a list of common issues you may encounter when using this plugin. Please review the solutions or explanations provided for any issues that are relevant to your situation.
Emails Not Sending (SMTP Troubleshooting)
If your emails are not sending, please understand this is not related to our plugin, but rather to WordPress and SMTP. You absolutely need to have SMTP properly configured on your site to send email from any form. Please check our full SMTP settings document which includes some basic instructions and various troubleshooting steps.
Wrong Field IDs - Important! Causes Random Issues
We frequently receive support requests for random or unusual issues, and they often have one thing in common—the field IDs. This is a default feature in Divi, not directly related to our plugin, but it can impact how our plugin functions. Please ensure that your field IDs are kept simple, using only lowercase letters or underscores. Avoid spaces, numbers, or special characters (such as accented letters or symbols used in some languages), as these can cause many random issues.
Entries Not Saving In Database
If your entries are not saving in the database, first be sure to have the setting enabled in the module in the Submission Entries toggle. If the setting is enabled, then it is most likely due to a simple configuration reason. Please be sure to carefully follow our Saving Entries To Database documentation for a full explanation of the contact form identification methods and how to set them up.
Forms Not Showing In Forms List
If a contact form is not showing in the list of forms under Contact Form>Forms in the backend, then it is probably not known in the system yet. For any form to appear in the list, you first need to have at least one entry submitted to that specific form. Otherwise, there is no way to “register” that form into the database. Once a form is submitted for the first time, the unique ID of the form will allow the system to register it with the form name or ID, the page it is located on, etc. and it will appear in the list.
Also, be sure to have the unique ID configured in the form as described in the Saving Entries To Database documentation.
“Please refresh the page and try again” error
Confirmation Email Not Working With Rich Text/Images
If the confirmation email is not sending specifically when you enable the rich text formatting and add images to the message, but sends fine when this is disabled, it could be related to a lazy loading plugin. We have heard of this happening. When an image is placed inside the rich text editor area, it renders as empty and due to the empty email body, it does not send. It renders as empty because of the SiteGround Optimizer Lazy Load Image feature and Jetpack lazy load feature – when this is enabled, TinyMCE (the text editor used in Divi and WordPress) returns an empty field. When the setting is disabled, it works and the email sends fine. To solve this, we suggest excluding this from the optimizer plugin by adding a custom CSS class to the image via HTML, and then add that class in the optimizer plugin exclude feature.
Activation Error For Divi Versions Below 4.13.1
Emails Not Sending (not SMTP related)
We had a customer whose admin and confirmation emails were not sending even though they had SMTP set up properly. Later, they realized they had a typo in their message merge tags.
We also had customers report issues when the field ID has characters that are not supported by Divi. Each field has a field ID and this is a very important value for saving the entries.
- Check for spelling typos in merge tags
- Check all field IDs to make sure there are no special characters
The file upload field looks like a regular input field
If you have added a file upload field, but it renders as a regular input field on the frontend, please check the admin message when you enable the Visual Builder. This message is alerting you that your server is blocking the necessary server directory from being created. To be clear, this is outside our control and not an issue with the plugin. The plugin needs to be able to save the files and entries, but your hosting server is blocking it.
The first step to try to resolve it is by deactivating our plugin, then activating it again. The reason to try this is that the plugin will automatically run a process to check if the directory can be created, and if so it will create it.
If this does not help, it means the server permissions are blocking it, and you will need to contact your website hosting provider support to ask them to disable the limitation that is preventing the directory writing.
Form Not Working In A Popup
Sometimes we hear from customers with various issues with the Divi Contact Form when using it in a popup. Please keep in mind that Divi does not offer any native popup builder, and because of this, many 3rd party developers are offering plugins and code tutorials. Unfortunately, what we have noticed, is that not all popups are crated equally. Some work fine, while others do not. Each one seems to be implemented differently in their code. Since we cannot control this, please understand that the issue may or may not be possible for us to resolve, since it is not our fault. We would love to work with any popup plugin developer to ensure support, so if you are facing an issue, please send us a message with the details and we will check it. Also, be sure to test the contact form with our plugin deactivated to rule out whether the popup + contact form work without our addon to compare with when it is enabled, as this is critical information.
Date Picker Error
We had a customer who reported that the datepicker field was not opening, and there was a JS error in the browser tools in the Console tab. We checked, and this issue was caused by Perfmatters. To resolve it, we added the following script in the “
Exclude Plugin From Caching/Optimization
If you are facing an issue with some feature in the Divi Contact Form Helper that you believe is related to a conflict with a caching or optimization plugin, you can exclude our plugin by adding /wp-admin/plugins/divi-contact-form-helper/assets/public/js/app.min.js to the caching or optimization plugn settings be excluded from being minified or combined.
"Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page." Error
If you click on the “Settings” link in the plugin list and receive the error “Sorry, you are not allowed to access this page,” this typically indicates a user role permission issue.
Here are a few things to check:
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User Role: Ensure you have an Administrator role on the site. Only users with the Administrator role can access the plugin settings. If you’re unsure, please check your current user role.
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Divi Theme vs. Extra Theme: Are you using the Divi theme? A customer previously reported this issue when using the Extra theme. In this case, the “Settings” link might behave differently. The plugin settings can be accessed directly via Divi > Theme Options > Divi Contact Form Helper. Try accessing the settings through that route.
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Contact Form Menu in Sidebar: Check if you can see the Contact Form menu in the WordPress sidebar. If you don’t see it, it’s possible your user role doesn’t have access to this plugin feature. Only Administrators or users with specific permissions granted by an Administrator can see and access this menu.
If you’re still encountering issues, please verify your user role and confirm that the Admin has granted you appropriate access to plugin settings.
FAQs
If you have questions that are not addressed in our documentation, please review the frequently asked questions listed below. We regularly update this section based on common queries from our customers. If you don’t find the answer you’re looking for here or in our other documentation, feel free to contact us for support, and we’ll be happy to assist you.
How does this plugin work?
The plugin adds new custom settings perfect integrated directly into the existing Divi Contact Form module. Whenever the plugin is active, helpful new settings will appear inside the module. It also adds other features and custom settings to the backend admin area!
Is this a new separate module?
Nope! This is not a new module, but rather an upgrade to the existing Divi Contact Form module. The great part about our unique approach to plugins is that you can install or remove this plugin without affecting your existing Contact Form modules!
Why is there no visual preview?
Please note that Divi unfortunately cannot render a preview of our custom settings inside the Visual Builder. The custom settings provided by our plugin will take effect on the frontend when you exit the builder.
In the future, we expect Divi version 5.0 to be able to render custom settings, but until then we cannot do anything about it. We recommend keeping your page open in two separate tabs in your browser, one with the Divi builder enabled, and the other on the frontend. Whenever you save changes in the builder, you can immediately refresh the other tab to see the changes take effect.
We apologize for this inconvenience, but hope you can appreciate the value of our helpful and innovative features! The unique nature of our plugin which modifies the existing Divi Builder is too far ahead of its time! 😊
Does this work with the Divi Builder plugin?
Any settings which are only located in the Divi contact Form module would work fine if you are using the Divi Builder plugin with another theme, but you would not have access to any of the backend settings in Theme Options, since the “Theme Options” are only in the Divi Theme. You can also access the contact form entries when using the Divi Builder plugin.
How To Include All Form Fields In The Message?
Divi uses dynamic tags called message pattern merge tags that allow you to include any field values entered into the form in the message body area. For example, if you have a field in the form with an ID of “Name” then you can simply write %%Name%% in the message area, and it will automatically include the name there that was entered by the person submitting the form. Be sure to check all of our additional custom merge tags as well.
For forms that do not have all the fields required, it would work best to use our special %%dcfh_all_fields%% merge tag instead of listing individual items, as that will automatically populate the message with all the field labels and input data that are submitted in the form.
Can You Use Dynamic Merge Tags In The Subject Line?
Why Are The Entry Numbers Not Sequential?
If you notice that the entries saved to the database are not sequential, don’t worry! Nothing is wrong or missing, it is normal and just how WordPress works. You would notice the same thing if you checked your Media Library files, pages, posts, etc. It works this way because the entry number is actually just a post ID, just like other media, posts, and pages. This ID is based on rows in your website database, so it is cumulative sitewide, and this is why the numbers for one specific type of post such as entries will usually not be sequential. So for example, if you have a contact form entry #1234, but then you create a new blog post (ID #1235), then upload 3 new images (IDs #1236, #1237, #1238) then the next form entry number would be #1239.
Can I migrate from the Divi Contact Form DB plugin?
Where is the Message Pattern field?
If you are looking for the “Message Pattern” field, please note it is renamed when our plugin is active. By default, Divi strangely calls the admin email message filed the “Message Pattern” which does not make much sense. Our plugin renames the same field to “Admin Email Message or “Confirmation Email Message” for clarity. Please check our tutorial to learn more!
Does the date and time picker block selected times from being selected again?
This question is asking if the eight and time picker works like a booking plugin to restrict submitted dates and times from being selected by others in the future. However, our plugin is designed as a contact form addon with a basic booking form and is not intended to serve as a booking database. For more advanced booking functionalities, it would be advisable to use a dedicated booking plugin tailored to your specific needs.
Do you have a multi-step form feature?
Thank you for your interest in the multi-step feature! This is our most requested feature, and we absolutely plan to add it in the future. However, due to the upcoming release of Divi 5.0, we have decided to hold off on developing this feature until after the new version is launched.
Divi 5.0 requires a complete rebuild of our module, and we want to ensure that any new features, especially complex ones like multi-step forms, are fully compatible with the new code base. We believe this will allow us to create an even better implementation once Divi 5.0 is behind us.
In the meantime, we suggest using the HTML field in the contact form to create visual breaks or organize fields, which can help mimic a multi-step experience.
We appreciate your patience and enthusiasm, and we’re noting your interest along with everyone else who has requested this feature. Stay tuned for updates after Divi 5.0!