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Understanding and Managing the Flamingo Address Book

27 threads Sep 7, 2025 Plugin → Flamingo

Content

The Flamingo plugin is a powerful tool for storing Contact Form 7 submissions, but one of its most frequently misunderstood features is the Address Book. This article explains what the Address Book is, how it gets populated, and how you can manage it to suit your site's needs.

What is the Flamingo Address Book?

The Flamingo Address Book is a central list that collects email addresses from various sources on your WordPress site. Its primary purpose is to create a history of contacts who have interacted with your site, which can be useful for reference. It is not a marketing list or a tool for sending mass emails.

How Does the Address Book Get Populated?

Based on community reports, the Address Book gathers data from several automatic sources:

  • Contact Form 7 Submissions: The email field from a successful form submission is added.
  • WordPress User Registration: The plugin can automatically add the email addresses of newly registered users.
  • Comments: Email addresses from user comments are often imported into the Address Book.
  • Initial Import: Upon installation, Flamingo may import a batch of existing user emails, often starting with letters like 'A' and 'B', which can make the list seem incomplete.

Common Questions and Issues

1. Why are only some of my users showing up?

Many users report seeing only 20-30 entries. This is almost always due to the pagination feature. Look for page navigation buttons in the top and bottom right corners of the Address Book table to view more entries.

2. Can I disable the Address Book entirely?

Yes. If you have no use for this feature, you can prevent Flamingo from collecting data into the Address Book by adding code to your theme's functions.php file. This code removes the actions that pull in data from users and comments:

remove_action( 'wp_insert_comment', 'flamingo_insert_comment' );
remove_action( 'transition_comment_status', 'flamingo_transition_comment_status', 10, 3 );
remove_action( 'profile_update', 'flamingo_user_profile_update' );
remove_action( 'user_register', 'flamingo_user_profile_update' );

function return_empty_contact( $args ) {
  return array(
    'email' => '',
    'name' => '',
    'props' => array(),
  );
}
add_filter( 'flamingo_add_contact', 'return_empty_contact' );

Important: As with any code modification, it is highly recommended to use a child theme and test this on a staging site first. Alternatively, a community member has created a dedicated plugin, Disable Flamingo Addressbook, to handle this.

3. How can I delete a large number of contacts?

If you have a massive number of spam entries causing a 504 timeout when trying to delete them from the admin screen, you will need to delete them directly from the database. The contacts are stored in the wp_posts table with a post_type of flamingo_contact. You can use a database management tool like phpMyAdmin to run a query to delete them. Always create a full backup of your database before performing any direct queries.

4. Why are there entries from WordPress user registrations?

This is the default behavior of the plugin. If you see "User" in the History column, it means the contact was created from a WordPress user account, not a form submission. To stop this, use the code snippet above to remove the profile_update and user_register actions.

Conclusion

The Flamingo Address Book is a feature designed for logging contacts, but it may not be necessary for every website. By understanding its data sources and using the provided methods to customize its behavior, you can ensure the plugin works exactly how you need it to. For more persistent issues, such as the Screen Options pagination not working, checking the plugin's support forums for ongoing discussions is recommended.

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