CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi!

I am running CiviCRM for a voluntary organization, and would need a way for public users to easily subscribe to our newsletters. I find a lot of descriptions on how to accomplish this on drupal installations, using the http://drupal.demo.civicrm.org/civicrm/mailing/subscribe?reset=1 type of form. However, mine is a Joomla installation.

So far, what I have is a group for contacts called "newsletter" to which I manually add people wanting our newsletters. I have not utilized the member function at all.

I have been digging around in these fora and the documentation but still getting no wiser. Anyone that can give advice or point in the right direction?

Magnus Larsson

Or you can create a profile (that is, a form with fields for collecting info) in administer civiCRM and set it (in advanced settings) to automatically add people to a group on entry ("newsletter" in this case).  Then you can click
"stand-alone form" in the profile listing page and you get code you can paste into a module.

Having done the above, you then need a Joomla module in which you can paste code, which means you'll have to download something from the Joomla extensions directory (google it).  I use "Sorcerer" which is simple and gives me no problem.

This way is more work than linking to the pre-made subscription form, but your users will have one less step, which presumably will mean you'll get a few more results.  You get their e-mail address on the first click.

I've then taken it one step further and made a second profile that contains lots more information: name, address, phone, interests, etc.  I chose the option in the first newsletter sign-up profile to redirect them to another page, which was the page of the second profile.  The number of people who fill out the second page is only a fraction of the just entering an e-mail option, but at least they can.

Oh - one other thing I learned.  If you do set up a newsletter sign-up, you've got to remember to set any groups that people shouldn't sign up for to user and admin only access.  I forgot and for a little while I gave folks an option to sign up for the state legislature list.  You gotta get elected to be on that list!

a couple of questions

1. Can you elaborate on what "but the web confirmation does not work" mean? what does not work, what are the error messages? what do u get when u click on the link

2. What do u mean by "mail sent is not recognized by civimail as a civimail mail"

3. Your 2nd solution should include confirmation email IF you have civimail enabled. Can you double check and ensure u have CiviMail enabled (I think u do)

lobo

to fix the "You do not have permission to execute this url."

edit components/com_civicrm/civicrm.php, search for subscribe (line 129 or so)  and also add 'confirm' there. this has been fixed in 2.2

lobo

Okej. Solved. It was a question of the site url being set inconsistently, sometimes to www.agslo.se and sometimes to agslo.se. After making sure it is www.agslo.se everywhere in the civicrm settings, and only using this, subscription via standard form works, and web confirmation of this works.

Still. however, my customized module based on the standard subscribe form, does not work. I'll return when it does.

Magnus