Many WordPress websites include user registration and login functionality, and it's nice to include the username of the person submitting the form. In this tutorial I will show you how to have the username automatically send with a Contact Form 7 form submission.  If you don't know what Contact Form 7 is, it's a popular WordPress plugin that allows you to create custom email forms on your WordPress website.

Contact Form 7 has what are called 'Special Mail Tags' built in to the plugin. The user optionally enters these special mail tags into the 'Message body' section of the Contact Form 7 admin when creating and editing custom forms. In the tutorial below I will show you how to add a new custom 'Special Mail Tag' allowing you to include the logged in username in the form message.

Creating a custom 'username' Special Mail Tag in Contact Form 7

1. Log into WordPress and make sure you have the Contact Form 7 plugin installed.
2. Click on 'Plugins'.
3. Click on 'Edit' under the 'Contact Form 7' plugin.
4. Click on the link 'contact-form-7/modules/special-mail-tags.php' on the right side of the page.
5. Somewhere in the source code enter this code snippet:

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   add_filter( 'wpcf7_special_mail_tags', 'wpcf7_special_mail_tag_userdata', 10, 2 );
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   function wpcf7_special_mail_tag_userdata( $output, $name ) {
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    // For backwards compat.
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    $name = preg_replace( '/^wpcf7\./', '_', $name );
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    global $current_user;
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    if ( 'user_login' == $name )
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    $output = $current_user->user_login;
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    return $output;
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   }

6. Click the 'Update File' button.

Make a form include the username of the logged in user

1. Click on the 'Contact' tab.
2. From the list of 'Contact Form 7' forms, click the one you want to edit so that the username sends with the form data.
3. Enter the tag [user_login] somewhere in your 'Message body' field, and it will automatically be replaced with the username of the person sending the form, if they are logged in.

   Example: "Username: [user_login] " 

4. Click the 'Save' button.