The Dotdigital WordPress sign-up form plugin allows you to convert your WordPress blog or website visitors into sign-ups for your newsletter and email marketing campaigns. The plugin ensures that your new email subscribers are added directly to your Dotdigital lists.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
The plugin can only be uploaded to the self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org), not the hosted version. If you would like further information on this, please read WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.
The plugin is only compatible with PHP 7.4 or lower. It is not compatible with PHP 8.0 or later versions.
Features
Features of the plugin include:
Adding email addresses into multiple lists.
Capturing additional information to store in your contact data fields.
Reordering lists and contact data fields.
A new look: native WordPress design with tabbed navigation
Resubscribe unsubscribed email addresses.
Install the plugin
If you already have v1 installed, a message pops up in the admin area of your WordPress account informing you that a new version is available. You can follow the steps to update from there.
If you don’t already have v1, log into your WordPress account and:
Go to Plugins in the left-hand menu.
Select the magnifying glass icon.
Search for Dotdigital Sign-up Form Widget.
Select Install.
When installed, select Activate Plugin.
The plugin appears as Dotdigital in your left-hand menu.
Setup
When you select Dotdigital in your left-hand menu, you have access to tabs for:
API credentials
The plugin integrates through our API, so you need your Dotdigital API credentials. Enter your API username and API password in this tab, then select Save Changes. You see a summary of the account details, allowing you to confirm that the form is connected to the correct account.
If you don’t have API user credentials, then Setting up your API user on our developer hub outlines how you can create them.
Your API credentials are not stored if you deactivate the plugin at any point. If you deactivate, you need to re-enter the credentials when you reactivate the plugin.
My address books
Terminology change
This article references Address books. These have been renamed in Dotdigital to Lists. To locate lists in Dotdigital, go to Audience > Lists.
This is where you can select which of your Dotdigital lists your visitors are added to when they sign up. To choose a list, select the check box to the left of the list name. You can select one list or multiple, depending upon your requirements.
To make a list visible to visitors, select the Visible? check box to the far right. Once selected, you can edit the value in the Change label field. This allows you to edit how the name of the list appears to your site visitors.
Hide a chosen list
Leave the Visible? check box for a list unselected to prevent this list from displaying to your visitors. For example, you might have a Website sign ups list you use as a record that you don’t want visitors to be able to remove themselves from.
Reorder lists
Your sign-up form isn't dictated by the fixed order of your lists in your Dotdigital account. You can reorder the display of your lists if you want to. Hover over a list to highlight it in pink, and a drag-and-drop handle appears on the far left-hand side of the row. Drag and drop the row to the new position you want. The other rows will shift up or down accordingly.
To save your selections and edits, select Save Changes at the bottom of the page.
My contact data fields
This is where you choose which of your Dotdigital contact data fields your visitor fills in upon signing up, which gives you the chance to enrich your contact data.
Select a data field to make it visible to your site visitors. Edit the value in the Change label field to manage how the data field name displays. For example, for the LASTNAME field, you could display the label Please enter your last name.
On the far right-hand side, select the check box for a data field to make it a required field. This displays on your sign-up form as an asterisk against the field label.
To change the display order of your contact data fields, hover over a field to highlight it, then drag and drop it to your desired position.
To save your selections and edits, select Save Changes at the foot of the page.
Messages
This allows you to customise your sign-up form messages. For example, if you don’t send out a newsletter but are asking your visitors to sign up for a different kind of communication, you won’t want the form header default message to read Subscribe to our newsletter.
There are seven fields that you can customise:
form header
invalid email error message
required field missing error message
submission success message
submission failure message
no newsletter selected message
form subscribe button.
Make any edits you want, then, to save your customised messages, select Save Changes at the foot of the page.
Add the plugin to your site
You’ve installed and configured the plugin – now you want it up on your site!
To do this:
In the WordPress left-hand menu, select Appearance and then Widgets.
This displays all of your available widgets.
Drag and drop the Dotdigital sign-up form widget to your desired location in one of the widget areas on the right-hand side.
Alternatively, you can select Add block from the top left of the screen and select dotdigital Signup Form from the list to insert it.
The widget is now available on your site for your visitors to use.
What happens if I drag and drop the widget but haven’t customised the form yet?
By doing this, you’re attempting to activate the widget when it isn’t ready to be activated yet. You’re prevented from doing so with a message informing you to use your settings in Messages to customise your form first.
Insert the Dotdigital form into posts and pages
From plugin v3.3, you can use the [Dotdigital-signup] shortcode to show the form inside the post's content. The shortcode parameters are:
showtitle=0 - hides the title of the widget
showdesc=0 - hides the description under the title
redirection=[URL] - redirects the user to a custom URL after successful submission. The value of this attribute will override the default redirection settings in the plugin dashboard.
Example:
[dotdigital-signup showtitle=0 showdesc=0 redirection="http://www.example.com"]
This shows the form without a title and description and redirects the user to www.example.com upon success.
Send the user to a custom thank you page after subscription
From plugin v3.4, you can find the redirection options on the Redirections tab in the plugin dashboard. Here you can set up three options:
No redirection (default) - the user will stay on the same page where a short message will be displayed about the result of the subscription
Local page - you can select a page from your website that will be your Dotdigital 'thank you' page
Custom URL - with this option, you can redirect your user wherever you want to. If you choose this option, please use a valid URL starting with
http://orhttps://here.
