Hugo Contact Form

Without Backend, Sent via Email (or Slack)

This guide will teach you how to create a beautiful and elegant form using Hugo.

Create the Hugo app

(if you're starting a brand new project)

In case you're starting a brand new project, you'll need some initial steps. One of the most straightforward ways is to use the hugo binary. See the installations docs for more details. To start:

• Open the terminal and install the hugo
  brew install hugo
• Go to the directory where you will store your project. Initialize hugo:
  hugo new site hugo-contact-form
• Add theme:
  cd hugo-contact-form && git init && git submodule add https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke.git themes/ananke && echo theme = \"ananke\" >> config.toml
• Create new post:
  hugo new posts/my-first-post.md
• Modify the created file, then start the server
  hugo server -D

Use your favorite code editor to work with files in hugo-contact-form. You will be able to make a contact form there.

Create the rawhtml shortcode or partial

Create a new file called rawhtml.html in the layouts/shortcodes folder. You need to add a single line containing:

{{.Inner}}

However, if you want to use templates partial, please read the official docs.

Add contact form

If you've used shortcode, open content/posts/my-first-post.md. You can use any type of field and any framework for building HTML, CSS, and Javascript. For now, let's stick with the standard "Name", "Email", and "Message" for our simple contact form. We're also going to use TailwindCSS to make it beautiful, but again, you can use your own customized CSS code too.

See more about Tailwind JIT via CDN.

---
title: "My First Post"
date: 2022-04-26T21:03:59+00:00
draft: true
---

Contact form:

{{< rawhtml >}}
<script src="https://unpkg.com/tailwindcss-jit-cdn"></script>
<form action={FORM_ENDPOINT} method="POST">
  <div class="mb-3 pt-0">
    <input
      type="text"
      placeholder="Your name"
      name="name"
      class="px-3 py-3 placeholder-gray-400 text-gray-600 relative bg-white bg-white rounded text-sm border-0 shadow outline-none focus:outline-none focus:ring w-full"
      required
    />
  </div>
  <div class="mb-3 pt-0">
    <input
      type="email"
      placeholder="Email"
      name="email"
      class="px-3 py-3 placeholder-gray-400 text-gray-600 relative bg-white bg-white rounded text-sm border-0 shadow outline-none focus:outline-none focus:ring w-full"
      required
    />
  </div>
  <div class="mb-3 pt-0">
    <textarea
      placeholder="Your message"
      name="message"
      class="px-3 py-3 placeholder-gray-400 text-gray-600 relative bg-white bg-white rounded text-sm border-0 shadow outline-none focus:outline-none focus:ring w-full"
      required
    ></textarea>
  </div>
  <div class="mb-3 pt-0">
    <button
      class="bg-blue-500 text-white active:bg-blue-600 font-bold uppercase text-sm px-6 py-3 rounded shadow hover:shadow-lg outline-none focus:outline-none mr-1 mb-1 ease-linear transition-all duration-150"
      type="submit"
    >Send a message</button>
  </div>
</form>
{{< /rawhtml >}}

If you prefer template partials

If you prefer template partials, modify your template and use the same form code above. It will work whenever way you choose to include it.

Create the free HeroTofu forms backend

Head over to herotofu.com and create an account. It will handle the tedious and complicated form submission process for you. You'll get 14 free days of the free trial. Later, you can leave it with a free forever plan. For the sole purpose of using the contact form, it's usually more than enough.

HeroTofu registration is straightforward. Fill in the basic fields and then confirm your email address.

Once you have confirmed your email address, go to app.herotofu.com/forms to create your first form. Enter your name and email address where you want to receive your form submissions Slack and Zapier are also options, but you need to pay for them once the trial is over.

You'll get the endpoint URL once you hit Submit, so remember to copy that.

Use the created forms backend in your contact form

Once again, open the my-first-post.md file and fill in the form endpoint URL. You need to change the {FORM_ENDPOINT} variable at the top of the file. It should look like this.

---
title: "My First Post"
date: 2022-04-26T21:03:59+00:00
draft: true
---

Contact form:

{{< rawhtml >}}
<form action="https://public.herotofu.com/v1/ENDPOINT_URL_OR_HEROTOFU_FORM_ID" method="POST">

// The rest of the code...

Done! Go ahead and test your contact form submission! You don't need to do any backend email work, as HeroTofu will handle everything.