A Good Way to Subscribe – the Subscribe2 Plugin

I have recently added a new Subscribe2 WordPress Plugin to this site to streamline the way new users can subscribe (or old users unsubscribe, heaven forbid) to the blog. The Plugin is available from Subscribe2 and can be installed in the usual way.

The functionality of the Plugin is well explained in the online documentation and details the modules added to your blog for the management of the Plugin functionality.

What is not entirely obvious, at first, is that there is a need to create a new page on your blog, which you can name whatever you like, and insert the S2 token into that page. This is fairly easy to do via the ‘wp-admin’ panel, just go to ‘Pages’ then add new.

As long as you have opted to display the S2 token on the ‘write bar’ from the Subscribe2 settings panel you will see a yellow box with S2 in it (the S2 token). Click on that and it will insert the form into the page.  Make sure it is on a line of its own, you can add text above or below it but not alongside it. Alternatively you can paste the code <!–subscribe2–> into the HTML screen.

It’s probably appropriate to write a welcome message and advise people what they can get by subscribing.

For it all to work you need to check the boxes under the ‘Appearance’ settings in the Subcribe2 settings panel and choose the new page as the target for your ‘[un]subscribe’ link in the meta tags list.

If you get a message on the page saying you can manage your subscription from your ‘profile page’ then that is because you are logged in. To see the form just log out and then navigate to the new page you created. This time you should see the actual form for adding an email address.

There are lots of different options for configuring the Subscribe2 Plugin but by doing a standard install, activating the Plugin and creating a page for the form to reside in as described above, you will get a basic set up.

As the title suggests, a good way to subscribe 🙂