Recently I had a client approach me about wanting to add an email subscription pop up to their website. Normally this sort of request is no big deal, but this particular client was using Jetpack for their email subscription services. Jetpack does not include a feature like this in their base module & I’m really not sure why they don’t to be honest. (For those of you who don’t know, Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin that connects your self-hosted WordPress website to WordPress.com to use some WordPress.com features.)
Some people love Jetpack & others hate it. There are a few main issues with Jetpack including it clogs up your website, auto-activates features that you may not want, and leaves you with a very annoyed feeling after activating it. Jetpack is not completely free either. But still some people love it, because it makes it way to easy to add cool features.
In the situation I am in, my client uses Jetpack for collecting email subscribers through their WordPress website, but they would like a pop up form to help collect subscribers as well.
How to Create A Jetpack Pop Up Email Subscribe Form
To create this Jetpack Pop Up Email Subscription form you need to download WordPress PopUp – Popover Maker. Once you have downloaded & activated this plugin you need to go to the menu on the left hand side of the screen & click Popup>Add New. At this stage you will fill out the name of your pop up & the heading as well as a subheading if desired.
In the main content areas you will be working with a short code from the Subscriptions module of the Jetpack wordpress plugin. The awesome thing about shortcodes is you can use them to easily customize things on your website. The shortcode for the Jetpack Subscriptions Form is:
[jetpack_subscription_form]
You can also use the following variations & additions to customize the way the form appears:
show_subscribers_total=”true” (by default, false)
title=”Subscribe to Blog via Email”
subscribe_text=”Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.”
subscribe_button=”Subscribe”
subscribe_logged_in=”Click to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.”
Here’s an example of what you could do:
[jetpack_subscription_form show_subscribers_total=0 title=”Sign up for our email newsletter” subscribe_text=”Give us your email address and whenever I write something about assignments, homework, or tests, you’ll receive a little email in your inbox.” subscribe_button=”Sign up now!”]
I hope this post was entertaining & informative. If you need help with Jetpack or any other email subscription services please feel free to reach out to Cloud Ninja Media. Our Ninjas are always ready & willing to help.
3/9/2017 Update
The plugin being used to create the Jetpack popup subscription is now called Hustle. To use the pop up with this plugin you need to download the old version of the plugin which can be found here. (I’ll likely write a new guide to using Hustle, given the popularity of this post, but it won’t be coming out anytime soon as Hustle will have some bugs to be worked out before it performs as well as the previous plugin did.)
Once built and successfully working in the old version the plugin can be updated and the plugin will import your old version into Hustle and still work correctly. I am just not sure why the new version is not firing the pop up feature at the moment. That is the main point of the plugin. I will have to take a deeper look when I have more time, but that’s what I would do, for now. Using a plugin that is 1 version old is not going to be a problem and it likely wouldn’t be a problem for at least a few years. Hopefully I will have a new walk through guide to accomplishing this task with the Hustle plugin once I determine the bug or the Hustle plugin has been fixed.
As always if you need help with Jetpack or any other email subscription services please feel free to reach out to Cloud Ninja Media. Our Ninjas are always ready & willing to help.
