I’d like to add a sign-up box with name and email fields to my site. I’ll want to add a title so people know it’s for my mailing list, and a note to say that i only send mails out occasionally.
What would be an easy and solid way to add this?
With a plugin?
If a plugin is the way to go, waht would be a good plugin for this?
I’d like the sign-up-box to appear in the right-hand column on every page — the non-blog pages as well as the blog pages.
It’s for this site: http://richardclunan.com/
(I’ll need to alter the margins on the non-blog pages.)
I’m a big fan of MailChimp for managing and sending email lists. As long as you stay under 2k subscribers and 12k emails / month, their service is free.
They have a tool that allows you to create and customize an HTML form you can embed in a widget that automatically adds people to your mail list.
http://kb.mailchimp.com/article/how-can-i-add-my-signup-form-on-my-website
If you’re serious about this, and willing to pony up a little bit of dough, I strongly recommend Gravity Forms. It’s powerful and very adaptable. You can have it tie into a Mailchimp or Constant Contact account with first or third party plugins (respectively). I got a developer license for Gravity forms a year ago and haven’t regretted it once. If you’re using it for just yourself, I imagine they sell that license too.
Otherwise you could use Contact Form 7, then you’ll have to keep a list yourself. Either one should have a widget where you can just plug it in. If you don’t want widgets to show up on your front/home page, make those pages have a one-column (no sidebar) template. Good luck.
You can use FeedBurner if you just want to send out mails everytime you create a new post. Just turn on their Publicize option after setting up your RSS feed and you’ll be fine. They will provide you with a code that you can copy and paste in a text widget that you can place in your sidebar which will let people subscribe to your blog.