CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

This looks like a similar topic where he created a small drupal module to uncheck a default box: https://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=30443.0. I think you could approach it the same way.

Guessing there's also a way to do it in Civi, but I don't have the answer on that.

If the user is logged in - I think the checkbox should default to checked if the user is in the group. If they're not logged in it seems quite tricky to detect whether they're already in the group (altho you could MAYBE use an api call to check this after they've entered an email address ?? ).

Seems like pre-checking the box is not a bad thing. You're encouraging folks to signup / OR verifying that they are. And if they uncheck the box then it would seem that they really don't want to be subscribed (whether they were previously or not). An alternative would be to direct them via link on thank-you page to a separate profile w/ only the group field and make it a required field. Instructions on top tell them to submit it if they want to sign up for the newsletter. You could also redirect to the built in 'subscribe' form (e.g. https://civicrm.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe). Neither option ideal since they may not click the link.

(You could also be more 'aggressive' and add any event participants to your newsletter group automatically via smart group criteria - but give them an opt-out option. Depends on who your constituents are etc. as to whether that would be acceptable or obnoxious.)