Newsletter Sign-up
This plugin will definitely help you build or boost your mailinglist. It provides various ways to let your visitors sign-up to your newsletter, for example by adding a ‘sign-up to my newsletter’ checkbox to your comment form or by offering a sign-up form which you can include in your posts or use as a widget.
The sign-up checkbox is the original strength of this plugin and is great for boosting your mailinglist subscribers cause the visitor that takes the effort to leave a comment at your blog is probably a dedicated reader and thus most likely also interested in receiving your newsletter. With this plugin all they have to do is tick a checkbox (or leave it checked) and tada, you got yourself a new subscriber.
Configuring ‘Newsletter sign-up’ plugin.
UPDATE: Take a look at ‘Configuring Newsletter Sign-up‘ for a definitive guide on how to properly configure this plugin to work with your newsletter service.
I’ve made it as easy as possible for you to set-up this plugin but to really understand how to set everything up correctly it is important that I tell you a little on how this plugin works. Whenever someone ticks the checkbox and posts a comment this plugin mimics the post request that would have been made when someone signs-up using an embedded sign-up form. So if we’re going to configure this plugin we need the values from an embedded sign-up form, which you can get at your newsletter service.
The form action
The form action is the url where the request must be send to. For some newsletter providers all requests go to the same url but for others you need an url that has your unique ID in it. Take a look at the following form tag.
<form id="newsletter" action="http://qoate.us1.list-manage1.com/subscribe/post?u=a2d08947dcd3683512ce174c5&id=fd667825ba" method="post">
What you’re gonna need here is pretty straightforward: the action attribute. So in this case that ‘ll be http://qoate.us1.list-manage1.com/subscribe/post?u=a2d08947dcd3683512ce174c5&id=fd667825ba.
The e-mail identifier
The e-mail identifier is the name attribute of the input field that holds the emailadress in your embedded sign-up form. I am using MailChimp as my newsletter provider and thus this field is already filled in by the plugin, but if it weren’t this is what I should have filled in, granted the following code (taken directly from the source-code of this page).
<input id="mce-EMAIL" type="text" name="EMAIL" value="Your emailadress.." />
See the name attribute? That’s what we need to specify as the e-mail identifier.
The form action and the e-mail identifier are the least options that you should provide to get this plugin working with your newsletter. When using PHPList or Aweber you’ll have to provide a list identifier which you can also find in your sign-up form, look for the name attributes list[x] or listname. For other newsletter services which are not included in the plugin you can specify this data using the additional data feature.
If you did everything correctly your commenters should now be signed up to your mailinglist upon commenting (granted that they checked the checkbox). Take note that upon testing you should use an emailadress that is not already on your list because in most cases those requests will be ignored. (make sure to check your spam folder too)
Do you enjoy this plugin and use it to grow your list effectively? Consider showing me a token of your appreciation by donating me a beer. I would really appreciate it and it helps me to keep offering support and further improve this plugin!
Actions
To download Newsletter Sign-up, head over to the WordPress repository page for Newsletter Sign-up.
If you want to ask a question, submit a bug or request a new feature, do so in the support forums for Newsletter Sign-up
In order to continue development of Newsletter Sign-up, consider donating $10, $20 or $50. This donation will be used to improve Newsletter Sign-up