Customising Behaviour Without Forking

This page covers the supported ways to change Contact Me behaviour from a sister plugin or a child theme’s functions.php. Stay on these patterns and you keep the upgrade path clean.

Customise the email content

Do not filter the email, edit the post.

1. Go to Dashboard > Emails.
2. Find the entry whose situation is “A member (or visitor) sent a contact message from your profile.”
3. Click Edit and tweak the subject, body, and token usage.

Once you edit the post, the plugin will not overwrite your changes on upgrade. BCM_Email_Installer::install() exits early when the email-type term already exists.

The plugin-provided tokens are documented in Email pipeline: {{sender.name}}, {{recipient.name}}, {{contact.subject}}, {{{contact.message}}}, {{{inbox.url}}}.

React to a saved message

The single post-save integration point is bp_contact_me_form_save:

add_action( 'bp_contact_me_form_save', function ( $message_id, $recipient_id, $sender_id ) {
    // Mirror the message into a CRM, append to a Slack channel, sync to a webhook.
}, 30, 3 );

The plugin’s notification and email handlers run on this same action at priorities 10 and 20, so a handler at priority 30 or later runs after them and can rely on the message being fully saved.

Soften or harden the spam screen

Use the bcm_spam_check filter:

// Allow editors to post link-heavy messages.
add_filter( 'bcm_spam_check', function ( $is_spam, $message, $reason ) {
    if ( 'too_many_urls' === $reason && current_user_can( 'edit_posts' ) ) {
        return false;
    }
    return $is_spam;
}, 10, 3 );

The filter fires once per submission with the final verdict: on the first matched spam pattern, on the URL-count gate, or on a clean pass. See Hooks and filters for the exact semantics.

Add a custom admin tab

Register a tab slug with bcm_admin_tabs:

add_filter( 'bcm_admin_tabs', function ( $tabs ) {
    $tabs['logs'] = array(
        'label' => __( 'Logs', 'my-plugin' ),
        'icon'  => 'dashicons-list-view',
        'group' => 'settings',
    );
    return $tabs;
} );

The renderer maps a fixed set of slugs to view files, so a brand-new slug falls back to the Overview view. To render your own tab content, hook your plugin’s own render (for example on admin_init, checking $_GET['page'] and $_GET['tab']) rather than relying on the plugin to load a view for an unknown slug.

Restyle or replace a template partial

The plugin’s front-end partials live in public/partials/:

• tab-form.php - the contact form.
• tab-inbox.php - the inbox listing.
• tab-message.php - the single-message view.
• tab-preferences.php - the per-member opt-out toggle on the member’s own profile.

These partials are included directly and are not routed through locate_template(), so theme-level template overrides are not supported. To change the markup, either:

1. Unhook the screen callbacks (BCM_Frontend_Nav::screen_inbox, screen_send, and so on) and re-register your own, or
2. Use CSS to restyle the existing markup. Every visible element has a stable bcm-* class.

Disable a sub-feature

Each subsystem is its own class registered by the loader. There is no global bcm() accessor, so to remove the email handler you unhook the send_email callback on bp_contact_me_form_save at the priority it was added (20), using a reference to the BCM_Frontend_Notifications instance you obtain from the action binding. If that is impractical, unhook the whole action and re-implement only the behaviour you want.

Filter the hub’s wrapper helper slugs

If a sister plugin registers boilerplate helper pages that should not show up as separate cards on the WB Plugins hub, add their slugs to wbcom_hub_wrapper_helper_slugs:

add_filter( 'wbcom_hub_wrapper_helper_slugs', function ( $slugs ) {
    $slugs[] = 'my-plugin-helper-page';
    return $slugs;
} );

Every migrated Wbcom plugin participates in this same filter.

What is intentionally not extensible

• Validation rules (length limits on subject, message, name) are not filterable. They are content-quality controls, not preferences.
• Recipient-list assembly is internal. Admin copy and sender copy are the only two configurable add-on recipients.
• The math captcha is not pluggable. Replacing it with reCAPTCHA or hCaptcha means unhooking the submit handler and reimplementing the submit pipeline in your own plugin.

Versioning promise

The hooks documented here and in Hooks and filters, plus the REST routes in REST API, are the only surface guaranteed stable across minor versions. Internal class methods, private hook arguments, and partial markup may change between minor releases without a deprecation notice. Bind to the public surface.